Author: Reya Ahmed

On repeating experiment 1, I found that each time I put the image through a different media (photocopy, print, scan) the colours would change. I would try to imitate the new colours for the next image, imitate subtle mistakes I made in the previous image and this altered the quality of the image. However, it was still recognizable to those that knew the painting. At one point, I drew some of the elements from muscle memory. When I moved to digital illustration, it brought some of the finesse back but it still wasn’t an accurate reproduction of the ‘original’ image. Thus, I took the idea of the image and reproduced it till the title became meaningless, or perhaps a challenge to copy infinitely.

Finally, I compiled all the drawings, creating an animated GIF to highlight the transitions occurring with each version of the image.

view the tutorial presentation here

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“The poor image is a copy in motion. Its quality is bad, its resolution substandard. As it accelerates, it deteriorates. It is a ghost of an image, a preview, a thumbnail, an errant idea, an itinerant image distributed for free, squeezed through slow digital connections, compressed, reproduced, ripped, remixed, as well as copied and pasted into other channels of distribution.
The poor image is an illicit fifth-generation bastard of an original image. Its genealogy is dubious. Its filenames are deliberately misspelled. It often defies patrimony, national culture, or indeed copyright. It is passed on as a lure, a decoy, an index, or as a reminder of its former visual self.”

Hito Steyerl, ‘In Defense of the Poor Image’, 2012

Scanned copies of the drawings (size: A4)

Once I made a digital illustration of the latest image, I considered that as the new reference for Magritte’s painting. I put out a call on Instagram, inviting the audience to copy my copy. The new responses were more imaginative and subjective than mine. Some of them made dramatic choices, others were minimal. With each new interpretation, the concept remained the same but the image itself was wildly different from the original painting.

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Feedback

What’s working:

1. Response is deep and critical – visually very interesting
2. One thing translated into an infinity (gif and reproductions). Therefore, no end to the project
3. Contextualising the translation by showing the software window 
4. How specific media affected the quality of the images
5. Instagram brought a lot of subjectivity

What’s not working:

1. The triard GIF representation (omitted from the blog as there was no way to align it on WordPress)

To develop:

1. Sounds could engage people
2. Naming the files could engage people
3. Showing the audience where the image is going – photocopy. Printer, colour pencils, etc can make it more exciting

As I continued to be fascinated by the hands in the portraits of the women, I started breaking the photographs down into their constituent elements. Anything that indicated expression. Eyes, lips, furniture, fashion, and of course, hands. I photographed hands of women in similar poses and similar directions but very different contexts, I found tailor catalogues of the 1850s which had patterns and advertisements of the fashion that were present in the portraits etc. I also started running some searches on the internet with the names of the subjects. For a lot of them, I found long-ish Wikipedia pages from where I extracted a line that I found funny or an anecdote that seemed contrasting to the propriety that the photographs insisted upon. For some of them, however, I found no information.

I took elements that most intrigued me to create a personal collection of collages with handwritten notes. The layering of hands, mouths, eyes, furniture, and fashion was done to create something absurd, abstract and find new meaning by rearranging the original constituents.

It resulted in a publication called Inaccurate Portrait of A Lady, further emphasizing the fact that the portraits were not an accurate representation of who the women really were, realistic as they may be in their photographic format.

Feedback

What’s working:

1. Enjoying the layered meanings, takes time to deconstruct the catalogue. The publication is something you can spend time with.  
2. Handwritten notes work – intriguing, funny, inaccurate portrait – two truths and a lie, not taking it seriously.

What’s not working:

1. Messy collages – if you’re trying to draw attention to conventions – less is more
2. juxtaposition of contemporary hands, superimposition the eyes and the mouths (outside of the system)

To develop:

1. Where do you feel you are developing a new meaning? 
2. Continue developing the publication form – but what can you strip back? 
3. Drawing attention to the conventions of the photographs
4. Bringing in more historical information
5. Recreate the textures of the hands – comparing contemporary hands to the past
6. Raphael dallaporta – photographing landmines as products, translating bombs through the language of products – play with and exaggerate
7. Viktoria Bischtok – using online material, playing with composition and lighting… interesting details to bring into the book

Daguerreotypes at Harvard

“Introduced by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre in 1839, the daguerreotype was the first publicly announced photographic process. This digital collection provides access to over 3,500 daguerreotypes in libraries, museums, and archives across Harvard.“

For the project, I selected a set of 50 portraits of women between the years 1840-60 from this collection. The set was a good mix of women who were famous, mostly opera singers and stage actors at the time and some women of the aristocracy who remained as titles and names, but no other information.

Upon looking at the set, the similarities are deceptively simple. They are all women of a certain social standing, they all wear similar fashions and hairstyles and most of these photographs are enclosed within golden frames.

I noticed that the women, albeit elegantly, seemed to be photographed in a monotony of convention, dignity, and propriety. It spoke nothing of their individual stories, their adventures, or careers.

I started to make sense of the set by reorganizing and sorting the photographs in various ways: 1. by the frames used.

2. By separating the features.

3. The direction of sitting (left/ right) and highlighting the backgrounds

4. I became particularly interested in the placement of their hands. I wondered what these carefully choreographed placements said about the time or the women. Were they confident? Were they hesitant? Were they feigning a delicate temperament as directed by the photographer?

I started to crop out the hands and zooming into them.

Combining images from about 20-25 of them, I made a new catalogue of just the hands in full-bleed spreads.

Merging the experiments to document the evolution of my engagement with the cemetery.

Once I got scared of the place, I sat outside the cemetery at the bus stop and wrote my observations and musings about people and sometimes, my life.

Drawing a map of the site from memory. Only noting the paths and areas that I frequented. The map is not meant to be an accurate portrayal but rather how I perceive the place in my head.