Illford FP4, expired June 1983, photographed May 2023 copyright Douglas Stockdale –
When I recently wrote about embracing unexpected outcomes with my expired film, the photograph I featured was from a roll of very old 120 FujiChrome 100F. A recently used roll of Illford Black and White 120 FP4 film that I exposed earlier this month is even older, expired some 40 years ago, thus manufactured a couple of years even before that. Which might explain why it jammed in the back of my Hasselblad, as evident in this scanned frame, above. I am not totally sure, but this appears to be a four-plex of overlapping exposures, which as I recall, are the first few exposures I made that early afternoon.
Technical notes: I had just acquired a Hasselblad Bay-50 yellow filter for my 80mm Zeiss Planar lens as I had been wondering how my photographs of this decommissioned WWII/Korean War practice bombing range might differ using expired 120 Black & White film printed as cyanotypes versus my use of expired 120 color film.
Now to consider how and if this wacky negative might work with my on-going series? My small collection of expired film ‘failures’ is slowly growing and in the spirt of embracing unexpected outcomes, I am finding this potential cyanotype very intriguing. To say the least, it is complex and very mysterious. If I do use this negative, do I eliminate the black band off the bottom, which if I keep this image square, will also eliminate a some of content.
Nevertheless, even when this negative is cropped, it is going to be a very mysterious image. As I think of its metaphoric potential this image relates to overlapping memories and the question as to what is ‘real’. Also consider its title; maybe “time-lapse”?
So two things yet to do; first, I need to return to my subjects that I had photographed and do another do-over with some more expired film (maybe color this time) and second, prep this image for a digital negative and solar cyanotype printing to better evaluate its creative potential.
Make every day an Earth Day
Doug
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The Flow of Light Brushes the Shadow, an artist book from Singular Images Press, Fall 2022 release, $60.00 (CA sales tax for those residing in the USA) plus shipping expenses. Message me douglas.stockdale.artist@gmail.com or singularimagespress@gmail for shipping details and PayPal invoice.
Note: The Artist Special Edition (book + extra print) is Sold Out.
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