Kitchen sink was recommended to me by one of my uni tutors, following a discussion about my next project involving the idea of repulsion. Naked Lunch from David Cronenberg is also on the list. Watching movies for the sake of research & education is something I’ll never get tired of! This week, we watched The Five Obstructions (2005) from Lars Von Trier. It’s an interesting documentary exploring how obstructions influence our ability to create a project. It ties in well with our weekly assignments for a class in which we get to choose one photographer from a given set and ‘make a fake’.  This week, the choice was either Nan Goldin or Ryan McGinley. I chose to re-create a Nan Goldin black-and-white portrait. On the same topic of obstructions, we were given last week less than 48h to shoot a roll of black-and-white film in which the following elements had to appear: cat, carpark and kitchen. Plus, we needed to include a self-portrait on the same roll. The goal was to challenge our imagination and to process our own film before the end of the week. Since the last time I set foot in a dark room was 6 years ago, I had forgotten how tricky loading film in pitch black was. Everything that could have gone wrong did: film was stuck in canister, fingers touched the film, etc. Practice makes perfect. Overall, the film turned out well i.e. good tonality and contrast on inspection. I’m printing this week; I’ll get a better idea on the actual shots.

I haven’t used my dad’s trusty old Nikon F3 for a while and it was nice rekindling with it again.