Light throw (mirrors) #42011
Jacky Redgate’s series, Light throw (mirrors) comprises 11 images depicting domestic objects and forms photographed in the artist’s apartment-cum-studio. The series continues Redgate’s interest in photographing everyday objects as well as her use of mirrors and studio lighting. It is an extension of her earlier series such as WORK-TO-RULE and STRAIGHTCUT, which, like this series, reference the conventions of product photography and the legacy of twentieth-century Modernism.
This work is number four in the series and shows a colourful assortment of plastic containers arranged on a flat background (the artist’s kitchen wall) in a geometric composition. Redgate illuminated this still-life arrangement with light cast from silver, bronze and grey mirrors, building up the image with successive, repeated throws of light. This technique has created an unusual layering of light, shadow and reflection over the objects and has resulted in an abstract composition where light and dark, object and surface have become confused. Hand printed on metallic paper, this mesmerising image provides an illusion of objects suspended in space.
With this work, Redgate won the 2011 William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize.
(2020)
Chromogenic prints are printed on paper that has at least three emulsion layers containing invisible dyes and silver salts. Each emulsion layer is sensitive to a different primary colour of light (red, green or blue). The development process converts the hidden dyes to visible colour depending on the amount of light it was exposed to. This type of paper is commonly used to print from colour negatives or digital files to produce a full-colour image. It can also be used to print black-and-white images, giving softer grain and less contrast than gelatin silver prints. Commonly known as c-type prints, chromogenic processing was developed in the 1940s and widely used for colour printing, including for domestic snapshots. While recent years have seen this process accompanied by ink-jet and digital printing technologies, chromogenic printing still remains in use to this day.
