VIB-G-YOR
2024.
a photographic instlallation with luster paper and images from digitized Revolog Kolor film
displayed in the Smith College Janotta Gallery from 12/4/24-2/13/25

My formative years as an artist have been spent at Smith, and photography was one of the first mediums I picked up that I wasn’t previously familiar with. I quickly fell in love with it, and the practice of shooting on film came to shape how I practice creativity in all areas. I like to capture what feels like the moments right before or after a photo would typically be taken, and I try to only make images when I feel compelled to, so as to avoid photographing just for the sake of doing it. I also don’t tend to take pictures as much when I’m struggling (instead turning to other mediums), so after having a pretty rough year, I noticed a distant feeling between myself and this medium which is so important to how I make. I wanted that part of me back. Thus, the motivation for this project was formed.

VIB-G-YOR comprises eight images taken on a Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim camera with a modded fisheye lens and a roll of Revolog Kolor film, an experimental film that adds vibrant color gradients to your images. My original concept for the piece involved shooting film on that camera as well as a subminiature spy camera that produces 8x11mm negatives, and I planned to incorporate the negatives into the piece itself and make viewers have to look through their phones with inverted colors to see the images. Unfortunately, both rolls of spy film came back completely blank, and the Kolor roll came back mostly blank, with only eight images showing up that had varying levels of visibility. I’m not sure what happened to cause this, but either way, I was left with eight photos to work with and three days to rework the entire piece.

I printed multiples of the images in different sizes, and to keep aspects of my initial idea, I inverted some of them as well. A few were lightly edited in Photoshop, but most of these photos come from the raw film scans. The one rule I set for myself was that I could only use vertical and horizontal lines in how I cut and displayed the images, but other than that, the only goal was to make an “explosion” of color. This result came together in under 72 hours.

VIB-G-YOR was an act of resourcefulness and need. I encourage you, if you have a device that can switch to inverted colors (it should be in the Accessibility section in your settings) to turn that setting on and see what changes about this piece. Notice how the inverted photos appear normal, and vice versa. Think about how seeing it on a dark background changes the experience. Think about what new details you pick up on. I hope VIB-G-YOR can act as a reminder that art can be made with anything, and mishaps in the making process often open up opportunities to take your work in a totally new direction. This work holds a variety of possible interpretations, and you as the viewer have the agency to find its meaning in whatever way you’d like.