Photo Sculptures by Douglas Prince Technique Question

[Inayat Noor]

Yesterday I was able to see a group of Douglas Prince's Photo Sculptures at the Harn Museum in Gainesville, FL.

I was blown away at not only the technique, but the emotions stirred within.

www.douglasprince.com

Douglas layers positive negatives within a backlit glass box which is 5 or 6 inches square. The positive negative is backed by glass/plexiglass to provide stability, then give depth.
Each glass is then separated by various minute distances to give a 3D effect. The boxes are all approx 4 inches deep.

I have a few questions on technique.

1. How are positive negatives made? For me it would be taking a negative, put it on a light box, then photographing it.

2. How to take a negative or positive and separate out of it an image or group of images?

3. How are negatives adhered to glass/plexiglass?

Any advice would be helpful

Thanks

Noor

[Inayat Noor]

Greg,

There are several Darkroom 2 books on Amazon. Would you know the author?

Thanks

Noor

[pdh]

Jain Kelly

[Oren Grad]

1. How are positive negatives made? For me it would be taking a negative, put it on a light box, then photographing it.

There are various recipes for reversal processing of black and white film. It's a bit more complex than standard processing to a negative, but it's still something that can be done in an amateur darkroom. A reversal processing service has also been offered commercially by dr5 film lab in Denver, though it's on hiatus at the moment as they are moving their facility.

[Jim Jones]

[QUOTE=Inayat Noor;1268799]. . . 1. How are positive negatives made? For me it would be taking a negative, put it on a light box, then photographing it. . . ./QUOTE]

That may be the easy way for many of us. Normal negatives with normal exposure and development have less contrast than the original subject. To restore normal contrast, the positive can be made on high contrast film or perhaps the contrast can be restored in the exposure and processing. Years ago I would have used Kodak Tech Pan, but it has been discontinued. From time to time somewhat similar films are marketed. Litho film with appropriate processing may also work.

[EdSawyer]

Kodak also made a direct positive duplicating film for purposes like this. I used to work with Douglas Prince, he ran the photo department @ UNH for a while, and still teaches at the NH Institute of Art I think. Sadly, he's all digital now I think.

[Corran]

Saw these yesterday and loved them! I have some ideas, and want to try something similar.

[Inayat Noor]

Hi Bryan,

I work with a gentleman who attended UF and made the boxes Douglas Prince used. He said Douglas had 8 X 10 negatives. Unfortunately it was long ago and details escape him.

[Corran]

Cool, I was wondering about the source of the negatives (positives).

Some of the students here were working with lith film and the very clear base and density of that film seems similar to the Prince sculpture images.

[EdSawyer]

Kodalith was like that - clear base, plenty of density when desired. (it was cheap too!). Getting continuous tone from it was a bit more tricky though.