photography

Tiny details of life in a world full of wonders

Rummaging through my drawer, a black cord keeps me from closing it. I tug on it, and tied to a carabiner hook covered in green rust, a black funnel-shaped object appears with a lens at its narrow end. Its Bakelite body is missing a small triangular chip where the lens screws in, and the lens itself is chipped too. “Darn it!” I hear my father say as he bends down to pick it up from the floor. It is his jeweler’s loupe, which he used to touch up tiny imperfections left by dust particles on photos using a fine brush dipped in black or white ink.

I remember a day during summer vacation. I had been given a microscope for my birthday. While running through my aunt’s garden, I scrapped my knee. I ran into the house, curious to look at my blood. It was teeming with round red particles that moved!

Better not look at the dust on my desk, just in case it moves too… I lift the loupe and try looking through it toward my window. I move it closer and farther from my eyes until the inverted, tiny image of my village appears. That is how it reduces. I flip it over. At two centimeters, it enlarges the minuscule print on an instruction manual. Closing one eye, I hold the loupe in the other. I can’t see a thing until the object is about ten centimeters away.

I look at my finger, magnificently magnified. I am amazed by the landscape of fingerprint ridges and grooves. Did you know that papillary ridges are dotted with countless tiny pitted specks? I get close to my dog’s blue eyes. Around the black pupil, I see feathery strokes of sky blue, encircled by a soft bluish-white ring laced with delicate veins.

I laugh quietly to myself. I have completely forgotten what I was looking for in the drawer. Standing here with my father’s loupe, I realize it doesn’t matter anymore. For a moment, I am not just looking through a lens; I am looking through my father’s eyes at a world full of wonders, sharing the exact curiosity that made him pause and pay attention to the tiniest details of life. Without knowing it, this was what I needed to find all along.

In June 2018 I enrolled in a workshop at Terrassa’s wonderful art gallery Tigomigo. Its owner Paulo Cacais introduced us to the secrets of cyanotypie.

Cyanotypie is a photographic process that results in cyan or Prussian blue prints. It was invented in 1842 by Sir John Herschel. British botanist Anna Atkins used it immediately in a series of botanical books published in 1843. She can thus be considered the first (female) photographer. Blueprints were widely used for many decades in architectural offices until alternative methods were invented in 1942 . Artists still use it today.

During my visit to Tel Aviv at the end of 2017, I was fortunate to meet the artists Rachel Eretz and Lucy Elkivity in their studio and admire their co-operative blueprint works (left). The technique resembles the sun-dyed pareu we used to make in the Cook Islands. I became curious to find out if I could use this method on tapa.

I took some pieces of Tongan tapa with me to the workshop. In his dark room, Paulo showed us how to dissolve small amounts of potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate in warm distilled water and apply the greenish solution with a brush to the surface of our substrates. The prepared pieces were then left in a dark place to dry.

My first idea with embroidery frames and gauze fabric did not give good results, since it had to be kept inside so the wind would not blow it away and could thus only be developed through the window.

On a supporting frame, under glass plates held in place with clips I could then arrange my printing material on the dried substrates. I opted for plant material which I found outside the gallery.

Paulo had the great idea to scan my hand, print it out on transparent paper and use it as a “negative” that the sun could develop. It is amazing how quickly the colour of the chemicals turns from a light green to a greyish blue right and beyond.

If left in the sun long enough, one achieves a beautiful dark Prussian blue, while the parts that the sun can’t access remain white (or the colour of the substrate).

To dry the developed “photographs”, the wet pieces were just stuck to the large window of the gallery. I was so pleased with the outcome that I could not help but take a selfie…