Week 44 - Ellie offers an insight into the thoughts and processes of a professional artist

Edited BY

G P Kennedy

Elie - Milan, Italy

 It feels great to start this new season - in the cycle of nature and of life - with the symbolic fog that is so typical of Milan and Lombardy. 

 

 Just like the winter solstice and the emergence from the darkest darks is symbolic of a new beginning of light, the winter fog in Lombardy that gives way to clarity is symbolic here. 

 

 The end of winter traditionally is marked with the feast of the Giobia at the end of January, where the Giobia is a puppet of a witch. It is ritually burned on the square as a leave-taking from the cold. 

 

 But of course, this year it was canceled. So now this last fog of the season was the occasion of taking the leave and welcoming the sun.

 

 

As I promised last time, I am showing you some of my work and processes that have occupied my time. 

 

 It is also seasonal work and I feel like a farmer that keeps a close watch on the movement of the sun. Here is an example of it that reflects a work in progress. 

 

 It is indeed a kind of work that needs the sun as an agent. 

 

 You might be familiar with sun prints that produce white and blue images. Well, this is it. 

 

 They are officially called cyanotypes, photographic prints at their face value. 

 

In reality, I am creating them without the use of a camera, so technically they are photograms.

This is how I make them - and notice the scale and the size.

These things take a lot of time to prepare and produce, not to speak strength and endurance to keep a pose still for something like 20 minutes outside in the snappy cold weather.

 

 And this is the result I got from the work session above. 

 

 Does it look weird to you? Undefined and totally not photographic? Gives you the creeps? 

 

 I like this dissonance between the expectation of realness in photography and the perception of something completely unreal in the result. 

 

 And because the print is produced not by the contact between the photosensitive surface with a negative but with objects or bodies themselves.

 

 The process is especially important for me because it emphasizes touch and closeness, two values that have been questioned and disregarded in the last year. 

 

 Making these prints brought me to the physical experience of touch in a way nothing else made me feel it better.

 

 How do these feel and look to you? Any comments or questions are very much appreciated.