In The Studio: Talia Smith & Grace Mitzen
In preparation for a non-toxic black & white film development class at Gowanus Darkroom with Mono No Aware last night, Grace and I set up our studio space on Thursday afternoon so we could take some spontaneous, collaborative photos of each other and develop our work together. Grace used her Mamiya 7ii and I opted for my go-to 35mm camera, the Canon T70.
We started with Grace taking photos of me, and decided to roll out one of our previously used spray-painted seamless backdrops so we could incorporate a textured background into what would otherwise be considered “conventional studio portraiture.” With the intention set to play, I dressed up as a makeshift clown (shoutout to our never-ending stock of props/styling pieces we always have laying around the studio), we pulled out a stool, set up a two-point lighting system with our in-studio LED panels, and began to shoot. With only 10 exposures for the medium format roll, Grace took photos of me sitting, bending over the stool, perched, and turned around. We ran through her roll arguably quicker than we expected to, but were happy with the results of our makeshift setup nonetheless.
For my roll of Grace, we wound up the seamless backdrop and exposed the white brick wall behind our photoshoot set up area, stuck with a two-point lighting system, and got to work as quickly as we did with her shoot of me. I encouraged Grace to go through a typical yoga flow—something that comes naturally and comfortably for her—and decided to work around her natural movement to get my desired images. I’ve recently been interested in the idea of natural body contours, folds, creases and crevices wherever they present themselves, and the idea of documenting spontaneous physical movement in still images. With only a few necessary lighting adjustments to be made and 36 frames to work with, we moved through the roll, again, quicker than we expected, but so happy with how our collaborative shooting experience turned out. We both had our exposed black and white rolls ready to go for our non-toxic development class and went into the lesson at Gowanus Darkroom incredibly excited to develop and view our images of each other.
Our incredibly knowledgable instructor from Mono No Aware film lab lead us and a class of about 30 other students through a basic caffenol development recipe for black and white film. Developed mediums ranged from 16mm & 8mm motion film, 120mm medium format still film, and a number of 35mm still rolls. We mixed the non-toxic developer with our very own hands, agitated, rinsed and processed the film in small groups, met some new friends along the way, and watched our rolls be hung to dry/scanned by the lovely staff members of the darkroom. At the end of the night, our film scans were sent over to us as digital files, we cut and packaged our film rolls to take them home, and Grace & I left feeling just as excited about our work as we felt when we started shooting together in the studio.
Not only was the process of making these images incredibly collaborative and fulfilling, but from start to finish, this experience reminded me that working with others and sharing ideas/alternative processes is what keeps my love for photography going. Thank you to everyone involved in every step of the process that made these images a reality—I look forward to shooting more with my lovely friends at our studio space and attending more community-building classes as I go. <3
