Catharine MacTavish

Night Shift lithograph by Catharine MacTavish (1979) 

Catharine made this series of prints (if I remember this correctly) while working as a night clerk in a hospital. In an e-mail she wrote to me:

The drawing was one of many experiments investigating what adults mean by "selfless". This series was very deluded! while being unimpeachable as a baby step towards an insightful and empowering comprehension of "selflessness".

The notion that a room can appear in the absence of a sentient inhabitant, if only a fly, is mistaken, crumbles under scrutiny, and is a pillar of endless trouble. It's a trap, so the door out is a door in.

It's an untested premise harboured by many, and they remain in the trap, which is yes cyclic, circular, tubular 

Foto Labor Service Görner

A darkroom in the back of Foto Labor Service Görner in Dresden I worked in once. Paid per hour. Late October 2016. I documented the place pretty thoroughly. I've always liked being in darkrooms so capturing the nuance of the clutter and the textures was a way of hanging onto them. Or I just wanted to remember the little inventions of the space for future reference.

This is the first place I ever used a print drier. It was a conveyer belt with heat coils. I mostly just printed contact sheets.. maybe the last time I did so.

technician pictures 2

Al Razutis as Moon

Last visit to Saturna Al said to me he has 5 Al's in his head...
The first four are: 
Physics Al
Artaud Al
Cosmic laugh Al
Visual Alchemy Al
I forgot to make note of the fifth.

Portrait of Al Razutis through large parabolic mirror toned in iron.
Al & I are both fans of Georges Méliès.

Portrait of Al Razutis through large parabolic mirror toned in copper.
Al & I are both fans of Georges Méliès.

 

tw fotoclub in brussels

Where I printed for two years in Brussels. The darkroom was located in the basement of a community centre. In exchange for free rent, members of the darkroom would teach darkroom workshops to local community members. I think I paid 50 euros a year for my membership.

2023 holiday cards in collaboration with Natasha Katedralis and Tiziana la Melia

Following a series of darkroom workshops Tiziana & Natasha & I teamed up to make simple 4 x 8" holiday cards from leftover photo paper. The studio was hosting a holiday market at the end of the month.

We were inspired by Weegee's suggestion of 'making photography pay' out of the 1964 book Weegee's Creative Photography.

 

razutis july 2023 visit

First visit to meet al razutis on saturna island in July of 2023. 

Itinerary

Sunday July 2nd

915am Ferry Mainland to Pender arrive 1120am

Spend half day on Pender and drop-off dog

515pm Aqualink to Saturna arrive 5:45pm ($21 each)

SPEND NIGHT SATURNA

Monday July 3rd 

Spend morning and early afternoon Saturna with Al documenting studio and interview

425pm Walk-on ferry to Pender arrive 6:50pm ($12 each)

I recorded most of the conversations we had that day with the intention to publish an interview but it grew to be something else: Gravity wins, Entropy rules

The following is a simple excerpt from that several hour long recording

START OF Al 2.m4a ( Begins @ 7 mins)

Felix: The holograms, they don’t last forever right?

Al: No. Some of them disintegrated predictably over time. It depends. If you have a dichromated emulsion like the green one over there. That’s ammonium dichromate which cannot touch water. If it does — if there’s a little crack in the glass and the water seeps in — it will start to erase progressively, you know. It’ll become a blank plate. And you’ll watch it overtime do that and you can’t stop it.

F: It's not an archival process?

A: No. 

F: So archiving these things is important also because these works are always changing over time. 

A: I’m gonna have to fire up the laser for you tomorrow. You know because you should take a look at the transmission holograms. Their resolution exceeds that [the reflection]

F: Transmission hologram is a hologram that needs to be lit with a laser from behind?

A: Mhm. the light is transmitted through the hologram. And the photons are refracted. The reflection holograms here are done in such a way that the emulsion acts as a filter — both for colour — and it filters out all the other wavelengths that would contribute to blurring the image. It acts as a complex mirror full of light. The transmission hologram acts like a complex lens. 

F: that’s a really good analogy that I didn’t encounter while reading about these things. A mirror vs. a lens.

A: Same laws of refraction and diffraction apply. For mirrors and lenses.

technician pictures