Dinner with the Cartiers
This weekend I had the pleasure of being invited to a dinner party with Françoise & Daniel Cartier. It was hosted Monika Wertheimer, who runs a wonderful gallery specialized in photography.
It was the last day of the Cartier show at Monika’s gallery. I had seen their work a few weeks before already, but last Saturday it struck me even more. Their main body of work consists of so called photogrammes, where an object is placed on Baryt Paper and exposed in bare sunlight for about 30 minutes. As a result the object remains white and the surrounding blank areas are exposed, turning somwhat pinkish, mauve or red. Technically it is a mistake when this happens, but the Cartiers are doing it on purpose since the tone of pink is hardly ever the same. Daniel Cartier told me that the tone largely depends on the wheather conditions during exposure. A clear sunny day will produce a much darker almost violet tone, while an overcast sky will render shades of rose with yellowish elements around the borders of the object in place.
They really are cathing the light! Quite in tune with this technique the images have a very ghostish quality! Even more so since their current series on show featured womens dresses and under garments from the past 100 years. All of the clothes were actually worn by someone, which makes the images portraits of ghosts to me. The person isn’t there but the very cloth which touched their skin is caught by light and banned on paper. I couldn’t think of anything more poetic!
Due to the technique employed all of the images are unreproduceable originals. The quality is simply outstanding, rendering finest, razor sharp detail where the fabric touches the paper. It’s a little like working with a huge 120cm by 60cm sensor (insane resolution on it) and having an f/0.1 lens on top of it. As soon as the fabric ever so slightly raises from the surface it turns into a wonderful and delicate bokeh!
Check out their site: F&D Cartier
Posted by nicolashenri on April 28th, 2008 :: Filed under Artist Technique
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