Lamination Series

These images are made with the Kodak Minishot, which produces an instant digital print at 3” x 3.” Unlike digital cameras, the Minishot has no memory to save the image or generate a digital file, so these are unique point-and-shoot prints, similar to a Polaroid. As a kind of “poor image” the color, contrast, and tonal range are limited to the capabilities of the camera’s internal printer.

I have tested the camera-printer over the course of geologic investigations in Nova Scotia, Oregon, Chile, and Argentina noticing how it responds to different lighting conditions and how it handles bright saturation or subtle color shifts. This project echoes the challenges of planetary imaging, seeing through devices and developing a new way of seeing within such uncontrollable limitations.

The digital images here are scans from the original 3 × 3 Minishot. They are color-corrected to match the Minishot as closely as possible. The scans allow enlargement of the print at a very high resolution, showing how the integrity of the image loosens into a painterly layering of color. This is happens because the Minishot is a dye sublimation process that can only apply one color pass at a time: yellow, magenta, cyan, and then a final clear coating to the pearly-sheen paper. These pictures are an assembly of thin ink splotches that cohere in varying degrees of legibility to a notion of landscape.