Dagies Blog

Anthotypes!

Squeezing juice from leaves and blossoms, green, purple, pink, red, blue, brushing it on papers and the colors change to brown, other blues and greens, violet, beige … I love it! I am experimenting all days long.

And then: placing things or negative or positive film pieces on the colored papers, cover them with glass and lay them in the sun. For several days or even weeks. The summer sun bleaches the juice emulsion, but only the not covered parts of course! So under the whatever … objects, black film parts the juice colour remains and … let’s see, this is the first time I’m doing it.

I will certainly post the results in three, four weeks!!!

Two of my best friends live outside of Berlin on the countryside and they invited me to stay in their … well it’s not a barn, it used to be a Werkstatt, a workshop, it is an old beautiful little brick building, and now it is my studio! 3 weeks!!

With the help of my brother Bernd and Gesine we tinkered me a nice darkroom.
I dive now deep into plants. I take my submarine and float through colors, juices, twigs, ideas and I produce pictures. Pinhole pictures. Anthotypes (antho = blossom), mixed anthotypes with phytograms (phyto = plant). The older I get the freeer I feel. Freeer? My autocorrect suggested freezer, but no, not for me.

And by the way, I feel the hell of a hot and frozen sorry for the US. For my dear friends there. See in real time how a „normal“ state is being transformed into a horror version of a … what? Police state? Moron dictatorship? Why doesn’t anyone succeed to xxx this orange amoeba?

Just a little sweet something on my summer balcony.

I am going to live 3 weeks on the countryside at friends’ from next week! Roji Japanese Gardens! Not too far away from my Berlin so that I can come home for a day if I forgot anything … yeah but 3 weeks next to garden, fields, vegetables, meadows … eating and working with them. Self organized artist-in-residency!!

Anthotypes is my next thing. Making photo-sensitive emulsions from plant extracts.
And also a lot of pinhole photos … and of course: super 8 films galore! It’s June! “Ode to June # 8” is coming!!!!

What can you do when it’s freaking cold and wet outside? Go into the darkroom and make some beautiful pictures!
I had collected some White Lamium (deadnettle / Taubnessel) plants and cooked them to a developer. Now is the time to make some direct positives from my pinhole negatives!

… another pinhole picture!
10 seconds exposure, afternoon light.
The whole and then a close-up underneath.
I love the blossoms… some still, some swaying in the wind.

I am amazed. By the field of depth and the depth of field my simple Illy pinhole camera has. Gives. Provides. Look at this picture! Dandelions, Pusteblumen, the one in front blurred because it was windy, the other ones nice in focus. From close to far.
Summer coming!

I have so much time at the moment and I’m diving in my pictures and films and ideas and inspirations … one idea is: opening an online shop! Selling what? Original photos, film still prints, a pinhole photo book, a comic book … checking out: can I colorize a cover? Simply with water colors? Yes, I can. Watch me!!! Click here!!!

Sometimes little miracles happen!
I was editing this fresh new film of mine called „Mjuk“ (Swedish for „soft“) and then I though: music! And then I remembered that I had two years ago a little glimpse of a contact to a Vietnamese musician called Nhung Nguyen aka Soundawakener said she likes my films and then I discovered that I liked her music … so I just asked her.
And here it is, the perfect sound to my images, water and moss, waves and clouds, watch it here on Vimeo!

My second film „made in Sweden“ is ready! Full of poetry, ukulele songs, blue images and a weird story!

Watch it on vimeo in deutsch and english!!!!

I am back in Berlin!
I have scanned all photos, developed all super 8 films (they are about to be digitized right now) … and now I am layouting a photo book. Pure pleasure for me, I LOVE to play with text & images!
How will I print it? Sell it? Bind it? Discovered japanese binding techniques, will try to learn it – so each book will be handmade with an original (baryte) photo as cover … that’s the plan.

Die ganze Ausbeute! 55 pinhole negatives. Not all of them good, but most. I’m leaving Sweden tomorrow, taking the ferry to Rostock and then the train to Berlin. Will scan them then … having a book in my mind … texts already written … watch out!!!!

This shack that have I lived in more than 4 weeks has wooden walls made of these – I don’t know what it’s called – pressed wooden pieces … and I see people and monsters and animals and scenes and … so much, I will make it a project, wait and see!

This here: a long haired woman reading a newspaper.

Little glimpses in and from my 5 weeks home.

My last week at Brunåkra … thanks to Corona I will not be able to take, as planned, the train back home via Denmark, but there is a ferry that goes from Trelleborg (South Sweden, not so far away from here) to Rostock, and then I can take the train back to Berlin. Saturday.
I am taking the last pinhole photos, look:

All comic characters have only four fingers. Makes it easier to draw them (only god of The Simpsons has five!).
I found a comic glove on the shore!

The sun is shining warm and I feel like dancing my film dry!!! 🙂

Here’s the film!

This is me at www.brunakra.com … until when? Probably mid April. Can’t take the train through Denmark back home. But there’s a ferry from Trelleborg going to Rostock that is still running … swimming … every day. At the moment.

It is so stormy today, grey and cold, that I don’t really feel like going outside, so I just stay inside and make a film about it …

My two favourite pinhole photos! Direct positives from negatives in their water bath.

We set up a table and a laptop to stream the whole performance on Google-Meet, being in contact with 26 people all over … Sweden, I guess, and some visitors from farther away!

I developed a b&w super 8 film as usual in something weird, this time: sugarbeet tea!
It was fun to do it live, explain what I was doing and why it worked and communicating with the other world!!! HERE is a little 4 minute snippet on vimeo!!!