Mimmo Jodice

[Sandy Sorlien]

I have seen this work in a museum. I am not sure, but he may have moved the enlarger up or down during the exposure.

[NG Sai-kit]

He might had tilt the lens just as to shift the depth of field a bit. One can do this by a Hasselblad Flex or Arc body. Kit

[Sandy Sorlien]

Michael, Yes, it's beautiful work. I saw the show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (when the monograph was published), and actually wrote an essay about it for the Photo Review. The motion inherent in the prints is a little vertigo-inducing after awhile, though.

Let us know if your experiments with the enlarger yield those motion lines.

[Sandy Sorlien]

You're welcome! Glad my theory was correct. I was wondering about that myself, so it's good to have it confirmed.

Cheers, Sandy

[Mako]

I have a copy of "Mediterranea" by Mimo Jodice and I have been fascinated by the tone of his prints and the novel use suggesting movement. The tonality of the images suggests medium format.

However, not all his images appear to have been created with the same technique. Some have a halo like in "Sculpture of the imperial nymph" (pp 78) and others appear to explode from some part of the image like "La via Colonnata" (pp 26). The former suggests to me a long exposure possibly with the use of a flash, while the latter suggest the use of an square gelatine effect filter, I hazard a guess, during the taking stage. This might explain why the zoom effect is not always at the centre of the image which would have been if the enlarger head was swiftly moved vertically.

[John Boeckeler]

I bought Mediterranean several years ago and tried to achieve the unusual image effect that you have tried to describe as "a kind of motion" coming from the center of the image. I know exactly what you mean, but I don't have a magic pen and can't describe it well in words. If I had to say it in a word, I would call it "zooming" because it looks like what one gets by racking a zoom lens out during a time exposure. (I never tried it, but have seen it in some of the more popular consumer photo magazines.) I assumed that Jodice was using medium or large format and achieved his effect during enlarging by either "zooming" the lens out for part of the exposure or perhaps just changing the focus during the exposure. So I tried this with my Durst medium format enlarger: First, I made a clearly focused exposure for part of the exposure (perhaps it was 1/4 to 1/2 of the total time); then I made the rest of the enlargment while slowly changing the focus. My results were similar to Jodice's.

[salvino campos]

I KNOW MIMMO JODICE WORK VERY WELL AND LOVE HIS TECHINIQUE, ONCE PHOTO ITALIA INTERVIEWED HIM, SO HI SAID HI USES A 501CM HASSELBLAD WITH A 50MM DISTAGOM, TMAX 100 READ AT 80 AND NORMAL PROCESS WITH D-76. AND THE REST IS DONE BUY HIM SELF IN THE DARKROOM.