Rod McNicol’s series of portraits Permanent mirrors grew out of his interest in nineteenth-century photographic portraiture, whereby the slow exposure times necessitated what he calls a ‘gauche, self-conscious, fatalist stare’. For McNicol, these portraits carried the ‘spectre of mortality itself’. The environmental portraits that make up his Permanent mirrors series embody many of the formal attributes of nineteenth-century portraiture that appealed to him, insofar as the sitters are seated in highly static poses, staring directly and blankly at the camera. Soon after, McNicol introduced a range of highly significant formal changes to his portraits, whereby sitters were photographed on a kitchen chair against a plain, neutral background in the artist’s Fitzroy studio. McNicol continues to photograph people from his neighbourhood in this way.
(2014)
Gelatin silver prints are black-and-white photographic prints that have been created using papers coated with an emulsion of gelatin and light-sensitive silver salts. After the papers are briefly exposed to light (usually through a negative), a chemical developer renders the latent image as reduced silver, which is then fixed and washed. This technique was first introduced in the 1870s and is still used today. Most twentieth-century black-and-white photographs are gelatin silver prints. They are known for being highly detailed and sharply defined prints with a distinguishable smooth, even image surface.