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Dan Powell: Artist's Model series
Black & white negatives, hand marked and colored prints, 1989-1993
This series was completed in the years l989-93 in Eugene, Oregon. Images were shot on Polaroid type 55 film with a 4x5 view camera. Prints are made on Kodak polyfibre G paper, sepia toned slightly and sometimes use of bleach, and hand colored on the surface of dry print with photo oils and pencil. The loss of image at the top of some prints is due to distressing the negative upon development of the Polaroid (pulling the type 55 Polaroid print/negative out of the 4x5 Polaroid back too quickly, which causes a lack of developer to be spread over the entire negative, leaving blank areas in development). This uneven development results in very interesting edges and a tension within the print between image and object.
This series arose from an interest in clay figurative forms which were continually being shaped by students in drawing and modeling courses in the Fine Arts Department at the University of Oregon. In a sense, the work is a collaboration. These figures, in various states of completion, were interesting to me as objects of representation, symbol, and metaphor. In using these objects to photograph, I would build a still life set around them, in an effort to add to the power which the objects already possess. I am interested in the process of transformation that occurs between the found object and the consequent photograph containing that object. Through building an image around these objects, the space is controlled, and a context is provided for the figure. The "object" is dressed and transformed into "image."
Image shown: The image shown above is "Artist's Model #11," 1989, a black and white image with markings in pencil, oil and acrylic paints, from the Artist's Model series, Dan Powell photograph collection, PH297_AM_11, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403-1299. All rights are reserved.
