Technical Notes

palladium print - abstract image by Alice Garik

My work is a combination of experimental photographic techniques and hand-applied color.  To make the photographic base image, I collage negatives of photographed tattoos with negatives of flora and fauna.  For the tattoos, I photograph people’s tattoos with a 4X5″ camera and enlarge the negatives onto larger film in the darkroom.  The negatives I use for my imagery of flora and fauna are camera-free.  In the darkroom, I project a small object — a flower or a piece of seaweed, for example — onto negative film with my enlarger.  I try to allow the shapes to take form in an organic process of discovery, working with various degrees of focus in the final image.

I then combine multiple negatives of tattoos with negatives of flora and fauna.  Next, I paint palladium emulsion on handmade translucent Japanese gampi paper.  Once the emulsion has dried, I place the negatives on it and top with glass and expose the image outdoors in the sun.  It can take mere minutes in the summer or even hours in the winter for the image to form.

Depending on my ideas for each work, I may expose the work again with other negatives or paint it with water colors.  Each unique work is process driven.  At each stage I decide how the work is communicating.

Surrealism = Meaning

A man who has tattoos derived from Durer's woodcuts of the Apocalypse. His arm is reflected below interrupted by shapes that symbolize the Covid-19 virus that was pandemic worldwide.

In my work I take small fragments of nature and make camera-free negatives. I combine these with photographs I have taken of people’s tattoos. The fragments of flora and fauna loom larger than the tattoos of my models in my works. I do this to compare our human scale to the expanse of the Earth. I hope that people viewing my work may comprehend the magnificent life around us.