Smile For Your Lover Comes (Stone Ridge, New York)
John Dugdale
Description
March 28, 2009
My photographic vision is clearer now than when I could see.
—John Dugdale
John Dugdale lost all but a small portion of his peripheral vision due to complications from AIDS. Previously a successful commercial photographer, he now shoots mostly around his home in upstate New York with a large format camera from 1912. Using sunlight, Dugdale contact-prints the 8 x 10 negatives onto photosensitive paper coated in a solution of iron—the source of the ethereal blue that lends an aura of time fleeting and eternal. The large-scale process enables him to communicate his unique vision. “I’m not flooded with images,” he says. “I think it leaves me with a clearer slate to imagine my pictures on…They start as a thought instead of something that I see.” The frame is his design as well.
Subject Matter:
Partially blinded after two AIDS-related strokes in 1993, Dugdale turned from a career in commercial photography to fine art photography. He uses antique photographic techniques such as cyanotype, platinum, and albumen processes to print the negatives he makes with a large format camera from 1912. To set up his photographs, he relies mostly on touch, imagining his images before he creates them.
Physical Description:
A photograph depicting a man sitting nude on a porch rail with his back turned toward the camera. Bright light filters through leaves on a nearby tree.
Usage Rights:
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