Tuesday 6 September 2011

New tech vs old tech

Fragmented closure, digital prints & sepia toned gelatin silver photographs, 813mm x 1220mm
KRIS SMITH

Kris Smith has been busy in the darkroom creating a new work for the Tracing Site exhibition opening at Newcastle Museum this Thursday. We're not sure if Kris is the first to take an iPad into the darkroom and use it to create an image with help from a trusty enlarger, but we reckon he must be up there. The image above comprises both digital and analogue photographs representing in a physical way the integration of old and new technologies. Kris speaks of the work as 'referencing the fact that so-called outmoded technology underpins and is embedded into the new. In a reversal of this, the new embedded into the old, the iPod/iPhone screen is used in a literal sense, via a projection lens, to create an image on traditional photographic paper.' The image below is a detail of an analogue component.

Fragmented closure (detail)
KRIS SMITH