I photographed the figure in her surroundings with my medium format camera. In the darkroom, I used the actual contact sheets for exposure to produce a “soft” negative image. I enhanced the effect with additional diffusion filters during exposure to create a shimmery contrast that conveys a dreamlike, almost painterly atmosphere. Finally, I treated the photos in a selenium bath. This process increases the archival quality and brings out the silver in gelatin silver prints, giving the original photos an almost platinum print appearance.

 

 

I started working on this series in 1998 and continuously refined it. I returned to some series because my qualitative expectations had increased in the meantime. Originally, I kept the format very small (3 x 3 inches) to create an intimacy between the image and the viewer. I've since produced some slightly larger prints of selected series. I also produced some of the gelatin silver prints as lambda prints in the dimensions 40 x 40 inches. I created about twenty of these black and white series; each of the series (except a few three-part series) consists of four to five photos that are presented next to each other in a cinematographic style or in other formations.