Justene Williams’s ‘Blue Foto’ is a performance piece that was staged for a video camera. The performance grew out of the artist’s anxiety about the value of continuing to make photographs when the contemporary world is already saturated with images. Williams’s response was to create stage sets from shredded photographs and costumes from recycled plastic, which she then re-animated as performance art, attempting to give a renewed sense of vitality to the still image. Williams has exhibited ‘Blue Foto’ as a video projection and as still images printed from the video recording. The presentation of the still images as a square grid evokes the procedural nature of the performance while also transforming the documentary images into an abstract monochrome.
(2019)
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.
