As mentioned earlier I want the work to be over 99% believe able but I also want the audience to feel it is not quite right and sow the seeds of doubt but only just. I do not want to stray too far down the path of the " uncanny valley" but to certainly take a glance into it.
The other issue with the photoshopped images was a technical one and that they were taken from online so were designed to be for web/screen and are generally 72dpi whereas print is 300dpi. Some of them were also small and this meant that if they were blown up to print they would pixelate and lose that look of authenticity. Technically this route could be tried but then the images would also be printed on contemporary photo inkjet printer paper and lose that feel of late 1960's photographs.
So the best option was to go the traditional wet photography route and try to develop pictures in a darkroom. To do this I was intending to print out the images digitally onto paper then photograph these on physical film and process them and then develop them in the darkroom. However after some research and also after speaking to photographer friends they suggested a better alternative. They felt that as good if not better results by blowing the images up and projecting them onto a wall, photographing them on film, then processing and developing them. One of the photographers at college even said they had some old photography paper that these negatives could be used to create photos onto.
The photos that I wanted to create hard physical copies for were.
1: Four college graduates. Wright and Griffiths included.
2: Ben with placard and girl.
3: Ben with banner in a crowd of protestors.
4: Ben and 4 friends on a night out.
The route I took was to seek the advice of a colleague and to have a refresher on exposing and shooting on film and then on processing and eventually developing. Shooting the digital manipulated version of the photos on a wall seemed to work well and I managed to get out of the processing stage on the film as my colleague did it for me.
Then using the enlargers to expose the photographs was a real joy as I had not been in a darkroom for far too long. After a quick refresher and sorting out the chemicals I soon picked it up again. The paper was quite hard to work with as it was old and this was great for authenticity of the photos but it made it trickier. However after contact and tester strip I soon managed to get a variety of prints, in differing exposures.
Lastly and once dry the photos needed pressing flat and then distressing a little to make the images look old. One thing that was interesting was speaking to photographers and discussing the size of the images and how they would have been back in the late 60's early 70's and also their purpose would dictate their size, finished and the life they would have had up until now. So the following decisions were made.
1: Four college graduates. Wright and Griffiths included.
This would be a professional print at the event so a bigger size, not too much distressing and decent paper with a large white border.
2: Ben with placard and girl.
This would be an amateur snap and would have to be a more distressed and also of a smaller size on a lesser quality of paper.
3: Ben with banner in a crowd of protestors.
This would have been a press shot but I wanted to make it feel like a rough or test version. So the image size was a decent size but the print would be left rough as it was a working test print.
4: Ben and 4 friends on a night out.
This would again have been an amateur snap, so the size not as big. It is the sort of image that would possibly have been pinned onto a wall and be a little tatty. Pin marks, bends and smudges added to the authenticity.
The whole process worked really well and I was really pleased with the end results. They look really authentic but as I mentioned earlier may not stand up to super close scrutiny so placed at the back of the display case furthest away from the audience may be the best way to go.
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