Nelda Karklina, BA(hons) DPVA

The Axe. Monoprints

2009-12-19T16:20:00.007Z

In a discussion with my teachers about my screenprints, I was suggested to simplify it. That there is just too much happening in this A3 sized image.

"Make some monoprints!". Just a simple detail of all of it.

I think I still didn't achieve what my teacher had in mind but I did monoprinting. And I have some satisfying images. It is a small detail form the screen print. It has lost it's details completely there. Since it was one of the images that somewhat inspired all this process, I monoprinted it.

It is a detail of Joel-Peter Witkin's piece "Un Santo Oscuro".

I feel amazed by his bizarre images. So I had my own try in creating the man/mannequin withe the axe in his head!

These are my first ever monoprints and I think it went pretty well. The uncertanity that this technique implies in itself is even some what thrilling! You either get it right or not. You can't got another one looking the same.

the Axe 1 (beginner's luck) monoprint

the Axe 1.1 pressed monoprint negative

the Axe 2 monoprint

the Axe 2.1 pressed monoprint negative

Why I feel like carrying on with monoprinting is because I am devastated if the end result does not match the one I have in my head. And it never ever does. And the fear that it will be terrible when I am done whit it is why I don't even want to start. I am starting to realize that just by chance I might get something brilliant out of it as well and that's why it is worth trying!

Making this there was a song that kept playing in my head... and it does not match with the images produced. Bobby Hebb - Sunny

The First

2009-12-19T15:04:00.000Z

It all was too much one day. Too much self hatred, too much obligations, too much expectations, too much pressure, too much everything.

Finally I just pressed Print on several morbid images I had colle

cted over the time. All of them had touched me and left an impression, influenced my self-expression imagery.

My creative space is not something simple at the moment.

Form my mix and match images I give you something I call "My References", a collage I made one evening when the "I was just simply fed up with everything process happened".

Well it was the first thing I had done this term. I was

well pleased. Just a little thing, a very insignificant thing but I was so happy! Why "My References"? Because only the background is an image I have taken myself. The rest is artwork from Francesca Woodman, Joel-Peter Witkin, Radu Tudoro

iu, Stephen Berkman and Aunty Google.

For the people who live in their heads, like I do, it is incredibly rewarding to make some thing manual, hands on paper kind of thing. Lets some of the anxieties out.

Well I had to do something with it. A study journal material isn't really considered a valid piece of work at the end of the year. And I did what I do the best: Spreenprint it!!!!

Although I am quite good at it, we never had a teacher and a technician who would treat it as something important, something to stick with. Till now it was

just like something else you can do with your free time...

Richard Roberts changed that for me. My simple, restricted idea about this piece of work was pushed forward till I felt exhausted. Not because it was too much fo

r the art work... because it was too much for me. No one

ever had asked me to think about so many different aspects of a single piece of work to make it good. Every one before that just left me alone. that was ap

preciated but hell, I would know so much more if I would have been pushed a little. But I am not complaining. I want to be pushed now and there is someone really talented and informed to do it.

My plan was to print it like this. One colour. Done! But then the pushing started! And thank God for it!

One after the other I added layer on top of layer. Every time I thought it was enough the printing technician (that I consider like my personal mentor) said to think about what else I can do, another layer, another colour, think Nelda, think!

This is my final print. I have started to realize what layers mean, what does screenprinting mean. I am pleased with this print. The last one does not have a title written on it, just that it is 1/1 (which it is), but I have titled it The First. See... My first piece of work: Finished, Signed, Numbered, Loved and Treasured!

Seeing exercise

2009-05-08T21:14:00.000+01:00

Bucharest

2009-05-08T20:59:00.001+01:00

Home

2009-05-08T20:54:00.001+01:00

Flatness in Space

2009-05-01T15:36:00.000+01:00

For the project I decided to try to shoot it on M.F.
That turned out quite interesting. I tried Bronica Range Finder ad i can say that i really like the camera. It has the high resolution as other MF camera, but it is more comfortable to use. it is light and handy.
The things that i didn't like about the camera was the lens that it had with it from the University media hug stores and the shutter speeds. it doesn't go faster then 500th of a second. And because i like faster films then 400 hundred because of their grainniness i can' t use this one with them. Although that is a good excersise about thinking through the relationships and connections between the amount of light outside, the film speeds, the apertures the lens offer and the shutter speeds.

I walked around Luton to document some sort of flatness, but in time i understood that it is quite hard to do.
over the year i found myself collecting a number of images that in my oppinion represents flatness in space.
these are film scans from the medium format Bronica with Ilford HP4.

Screen Printing - Four Colour Separation

2009-03-10T22:30:00.000Z

3 colours out of 4

All 4 colours

As one of our projects in screen printing we had to print a four colour separated image.

We had to choose and A4 size image that suits our wishes and needs and would be appropriate for the task. It could be an image taken by us or by someone else, or not even a photograph.

I chose one of my own images that shows my friend with a yellow balloon in her hand in front of rubber attraction space.

I remember our old teacher told us that there is no point in making a 4cs on an image that will come out as same as the original image - too much of a struggle.

I separated the four different colour channels in photoshop and then I halftoned most of the image, leaving the girl as it is so she could stand out more.

After the image was exposed I noticed that the emulsion is coming of the frame and that some details are going to be lost. But I decided to print it anyway to see how bad was the damage, but you can barely notice it.

I knew that the image is going to be more saturated and brighter in colours then it is on the computer screen or printed with an ink jet printer.

I have to admit that i didn't think it will be so contrasty and that the person will loose so much of detail and colour. But I am pleased with the prints.

I printed and edition of 9 prints and another one with just the key colour on a white sheet of paper.

Most of the prints are very well lined up and printed quite neatly, besides the blue layer that failed because the emulsion started to come off while the screen was washed after exposing.

This is my first experience in 4cs so I feel quite pleased with myself about how the prints came out.

Vernacular

2009-02-03T21:43:00.000Z

Vernacular photography are pictures taken by a non professional taking everyday life as a subject - that's how I would call it. Probably everyone else would say something similar.

In some odd way, it goes through my mind as an odd choice for a subject matter from a successful photographer, but on the other hand their way of capturing the everyda

y life has made them who they are now.

But in this time, when we are surrounded by millions of images on all possible media, selling all possible social statuses and all the perfect new season looks

and what is supposed to be beauty, how does a non-professional photographer choose his or her brilliant picture to post on facebook.com or any other internet space like that?!

Cindy Sherman choose to take images of herself in situations that h

ave been attached to women and how they should react in a certain moments.

There seems to be an image of how a young woman should look. Or what i

s attractive.

Log onto facebook.com. I see all these girls posing like th

ey see Kate Moss do it in the Vogue or any other magazine.

Pretending to be what they are not, trying to get more attention, more compliments on how good they look and how wonderful those pictures are.

I chose some of them and put myself in them. I made pictures of myself for a facebook like environment and then put them back on there.

I think I failed miserably. Mostly in getting that attention and c

omments on my pictures. One thing that the pictures truly are not good and people see that and don't like them, or me in them.

On the other hand I feel like I have gained a lot in not being admired for this project, because I never admire someone else's.

These kind of pictures are like a phenomenon for the new ge

neration girls who seek approval. It is quite sad, but I think it is worth to be admired as well for their desperate wish to be better, Vogue better...

Prague

2009-01-29T19:11:00.000Z

In between the ten hours I had to spend in Prague I tried to ignore that I am absolutely freezing and that I can't feel my fingertips and take some pictures.

Like every time I am in a new town I am more around being a tourist then a photographer (not sure it is a good thing).

My favorite picture is the one with the wall drawing in the arch. Think there is more symbolism in there then I could possibly figure out.

Documentary

2009-01-22T14:05:00.001Z

I was thinking about taking pictures of my grandmother for a longer while before I went and took these over my Christmas holiday.

I had a wish to make pictures of her as soon as possible, because she is in a respectable age and you never know when something might happen and after that there would be no possibility in taking them, ever.... But it never is easy to go to her's and just take the camera out and take the pictures. The brief about documentary and the desire for good pictures was strong enough force for me to go and see her one day.

I think I have got some quite successful portraits of her, but I never engaged myself much enough to achieve what I actually was aiming for and was expecting.

I found this being a prefect exercise about how much time we have to spend with one to make the person comfortable and loose the mask we all put up in front of a camera.

I never thought that far, till a teacher pointed out that I have to spend twice as much time or even more to reveal someone who's portrait is stronger likeness to the person I know and see when I visit home.

Only now I understand that photography is quite a psychological engaging and interaction between the artist, sitter and the magic moment of camera in between. And that you must be emotionally strong yourself and you have to be ready to be under so much pressure till you will be able to get the right moment that sometimes it takes more than one go, like in my case.

I was somehow inspired by Bert Teunissen and his "Domestic Landscapes" where he takes pictures of houses and their inhabitants. I find his pictures have a calming quality and the older people look like wise man with their experience and knowledge. But in my pictures I didn't want to show the house that is built around the light and the people in it. It was more about my anger towards my grandmother and I wanted to use photography as my anger management tool and revenge.

I never handled stressful situations well and this wasn't an exception. I never spent long enough time to expose her bitterness towards me and the world. I am on my way there in some images.

I desire to catch more loneliness and sadness, more solitude and bitterness even if it makes me somehow a bad person to put an old women-my grandmother- through that kind of emotions.

January 2009

2009-01-22T13:42:00.001Z

If you want to be good at something you have to get up and do it.

It takes time and practice to achieve something and without that work and self engagement I don't think I will get far.

Using this as my kind of new philosophy I decided to go out and take pictures. Look at the world though viewfinder and make 36 decisions per role.

So now in most occasions I take my camera with me, even if it is not taken out of the bag by the end of the day.

Over Christmas holiday that I spent home, I have enough moments and opportunities to go out and try to be a better photographer.

After a night of intense snowing, in the morning I took my car and went to the countryside.

I think it is not hard to take pictures in winter that catch other's interest. If there is snow, then it has it's own magic to it. It it almost like the same with children and little animals - they always look nice and so does snow.

I tried to show in my images how suddenly forests get different depth of field and how more friendly they seem to get (in truth they get even more dangerous)

I tried to pick up colours that suddenly seem more obvious. When snow melts again all the restart to fulfill their purpose and they blend back in the whole. But now I had the opportunity to catch them and show the yellows, pinks, blues and oranges that are like on a white catwalk.

Narrative: Meet Hannah

2008-11-26T16:13:00.000Z

In the three weeks we had to finish the "Narrative" brief, we had one week for a smaller project. We had to chose one of our pictures and add text so it would change the meaning of what we see in the photograph. I chose one of my pictures I took earlier this year.

Hannah lives and work in London. She

is a freelance writer for art magazines like

Frieze and Art in London.

As far as I can remember her name is Hannah and I couldn't resist the

temptation of taking a picture of her, her black hair and her red lips in the

"Hat Party" we met n while I was staying in kent.

Met Hannah one Wednesday with a guy I didn't know yet.

She was like a 13 year old girl again: shy and quiet,

looked anywhere but me. She was so beautiful in that moment.

In September I went to a fancy "Dress up in the thirties style".

She had a fur coat, a kidney pattern dress and a white blouse.

The most interesting thing was her suede bow.

We went together to a wig shop and in less than 5 minutes she had a new persona.

Her fine blond hair was hidden under a prefect carre cut wig!

Vis.Com. monday 17/11/2008

2008-11-18T21:29:00.000Z

So we had to tell a story in five images in one of the three topics: "The Witching Hour", "The One I Love" or "The Night Before/The Morning After".

It was about how we would use light, the one we can access and the one is all around.

I chose "The one i love" topic and did it in some way straight-forward.

I chose to shoot the pictures in "dull" day, because then there are no strong contrasts and everything looks peaceful. I decided that is the way how I feel now and it can reflect in my pictures.

I start with a landscape image, since I love the town as well and then move closer and closer to him.