Wednesday, December 2

Well and truly halfway through this main residency week, the participants today heard from Steve Geliot about Dark Skies and his work with the Earth Project, and how this fits with his practice of photography and drawing. The rest of the day was set aside for personal and group responses to the creative provocations posed by the speakers and facilitators we’ve already met.

Again, collaborations and working groups are forming, with some really exciting ideas. As an example, Olga Suchanova is setting up a Solargraphy project, inviting the other residents to join her. This involves placing outside (somewhere with a nice landscape and a view of the Sun) a pinhole camera and leaving it there from the winter Solstice 2020 until Spring Equinox 2021. She is going to demonstrate how to make a pinhole camera from recycled aluminum cans.

Playing around with the idea of Solar Flares and the radiation they release.

Moon film – Full moon, 30th November 2020. Darkest Depths Moon, Moon Before Yule, Mourning Moon, Beaver Moon. All names given to the full moon in November. My favourite is ‘darkest depths moon’. I’ve tried moving image of the moon for the first time here

Moonset, 1st December 2020. A bright nearly full moon illuminating the dawn. Moon before Yule.  Beginning to wane. The moonset in the north west today was followed by a beautiful sunrise in the south east. The first day of meteorological winter

Golden sun double exposure – Test image made this morning (whilst listening to the talk!) with double exposure of bare branches and the sun. Trying to bring in the current season, winter, and the sun together in one image. And bring in Gold. The effect of the blending mode looks kind of golden. Bringing in that amazing theory we heard about yesterday of gold from exploded stars. The trees themselves are built from stardust too… somehow reminded of the song Black Hole Sun too

On a very late lunch break from work – sad not to be able to join in today – but created attached in recognition of August Strindberg’s oft ridiculed attempt to capture starlight in his Celestographs. Exposed b&w expired photo paper overnight (it was cloudy so no stars unless they came out when I slept) – see pink tinged image – and used my fix mimicing digital technique to draw out image – see colour image. I love that despite these results caused more by debris/condensation etc. than starlight, they do take on a wonderful cosmic aura. Some more, if interested, from my harena Now series at: https://www.josiepurcellphotography.com/#/harenanow/ and on Celestographs via: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/august-strindberg-s-celestographs-1893-4

The moon setting, the sun rising and the sun setting, all around my studio

Wandering the Solar System – from my studio, through Salford, into Manchester city centre and back again…

Here is the latest result from me (Lewis Andrews) and David Bickley, After making a new carbon drawing last night, I asked David to make it into something sun-like after all of our solar talks recently and here is the final result!

SOL