when i first came to MICA the photography class i was most excited to take was alternative processes. i came out of the class not necessarily thrilled with what i learned or what i had produced but i still think it was an important class to have experienced.
we worked on a project that threw me for a bit of a loop at first- a negative exchange during which i was handed abstract pinhole images i had no interest in. but i was on this circle kick and i think these turned out ok. they’re paper negative collages scanned to create digital negatives and then contact printed with the van dyke brown process.
we also had to make images from our own negatives. i printed digital negatives and suspended them by pins away from a cream piece of mat board. these are just the images sans fancy display stuff but i think you get the idea.
for our final i chose to scan 8mm film that my mother gave me. the film is from when my grandparents were young, my family has copied the film onto VHS so i could do whatever i wanted with it. i enlarged the images and made wintergreen transfers of two sections of the film, sixteen frames each since 8mm film runs sixteen frames per second. these are just some selections from one of them. i think it is my grandmother but i’m not sure.
Rachel Verhaaren is a photographer originally from Long Island, New York. She now resides in Baltimore where she attends the Maryland Institute College of Art. Her recent work analyzes human and mechanical optical perception.