Bleaching Photographs

Curtis Mann is a photographer/ Artists based in Chicago. The work that he did that I focused my experimentation on was a project that he did by using photographs from places that he has never visited with conflict and war and subjecting them to a process of applying a resist to areas then agitating them in bleach to destroy part of the photograph. The colours the bleach make are red, orange, white and yellow, these colours reflect fire which gives his images a different meaning.

Bleaching photographs create an effect whereby it removes the color from the photograph. To create this effect I needed household bleach, cotton buds, clear nail varnish, colour film photographs and running water. 

I created the three below by painting over the parts of the image I wanted to keep with clear nail varnish and waited till it was dry. Next I put it in the tray of bleach and agitated it for a couple of seconds. I then quickly washed off of the bleach and left to dry. 

The photograph below was created by splashing bleach onto the photograph then washing it off.

In my independent time I experimented with bleaching more photographs that relate to my theme. For the image below I painted nail varnish on the brick work on the building then put it in the tray of bleach. I left it in the bleach too long which is why the rest of the image has been removed.

I used a cotton bud to remove parts of the image. for the first image I was not thinking about what I could achieve from using the cotton bud. On the second image I wanted it to look like the building was on fire. I achieved this by only leaving the bleach on for a couple of seconds so that the image was not completely removed in those areas.

For the image below I dripped bleach over the photograph. This did not work as well as the previous one I did as the bleach I used in for this image was stronger than the other one.