Mothers Earth and Grammatical Gender
Many years
ago I participated in a open gallery theme in Alberta called Mother Earth.
It is my
belief that the photographs of plants or flowers in conjunction with beautiful
women never work. But I did in this occasion I combined a Clematis montana with the just right chest of a friend called
Katheryn.
Today while
fidgeting in my oficina, I took out Katheryn’s extensive files. One envelope
was called Mother Earth. In it I found two very close negatives from which I
had chosen one for the Alberta show.
In my past I
have twice used a technique of lighting the edges of a slide with a match. I
could not find any matches so I used my barbecue gas lighter. I like the
results. I could now call this a Mother Earth of the 21st century
full of scorching heat.
The burned
negative is far from flat. It would be difficult to put it into a traditional
darkroom enlarger negative holder. My Epson V700 handles the three-dimensional
negative without any problem. Somehow it adds that sharp cool colour on the
edges.
Again I want
to state that combining the technology of that past century, a b+w 6x7cm
negative with a scanner (actually also from that other century) the results can
be quite interesting.
When I would tell my abuelita that I was bored she would tell me, “Alex, chúpate el codo” – “Alex suck your elbow.” I did just that in my oficina today.
