My Inner Monologue is Analogue
Patrick Boland
This event has concluded
Dates:
Hours:
Entry Fee:
Free
Exhibition Event:
Official Opening
30/04/2015 6:00 pm
The confluence of film and digital in a post-analogue world
The images in “My Inner Monologue is Analogue” were made by holding 120 medium format film negatives in front of my iPhone camera to create unique blended analogue/digital images. Once photographed, I processed the image in Instagram and published the result, the new image becoming a modern ‘positive negative’.
There is no disputing the convenience of having phones with in-built cameras that can produce outstanding quality pictures. But viewing the those photos on the phone possesses nothing like the nostalgic feeling I get when I hold a negative up to the light to ponder its reversed mysteries.
On a basic level we live in a physical world in which we respond to photos and film negatives very differently to digital images. When I look at film (particularly negatives) in this relatively new digital media age, I see sadness, romance and history all rolled into one. As a photographer who shoots digital for work and film for pleasure, I am often drawn to ideas where I can blend those two worlds.
In the late 1830s, William Henry Fox Talbot was responsible for pioneering making multiple photographic prints from negative film. But it was Sir John Herschel who went on to name the exposed film the ‘negative’ and the print the ‘positive’. The dominance of digital photography has done away with the need for the negative. We now just have the ‘positive’ image held in the camera, and the print that gets made from it is also a ‘positive’. I still see the world photographically as potential negative tones and contrasts.
The combination of negatives and camera-phone in “My Inner Monologue is Analogue” creates playful and engaging photos full of mysterious textural layers and reflections. The aspect of holding a reflective and pliable material in front of the lens also helps create random elements. These positive negatives allow impossible objects to exist together in one place from two times. The images look simultaneously to the future and the past.
www.patrickboland.com.au
Kickstart our month-long festival of the arts with music, photography, and community on the shores of the dazzling Bondi Beach. Be the first to know who won the 2024 Head On Photo Awards and get a taste of the photographs redefining visual storytelling.
Enthralling. Enchanting. Extraordinary. Discover exceptional photography for free around Sydney during the festival 8 Nov–1 Dec 2024