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Mythic Silhouettes
a photographic journey

Exploding the Negative
       by Meryl Joseph

This movie represents my personal and long term search to explore photographic imagery as a window to the unconscious, to the mystery behind reality, rather than reality itself. To me, a photograph is a pathway to enter myth, inviting the viewer to take a journey into the ancient cave, to find the language of the soul.

Early in my career, after an intense period of study at the Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy, the artists' sketch books and drawings for the Renaissance frescoes were the inspiration that propelled me toward spontaneity in the darkroom.
The photographic negative became a template for re-interpretation.

I began to layer images, creating translucent narratives that summon the viewer into the photograph, as if entering a dream. The stories suggest another world, another time. Imagination invokes exploration, adventure.

This impulse -- to inspirit the traditionally sacrosanct territory of the negative -- evolved into a career mission to bring movement and motion into the still image; to use the enlarger as a paint brush to explore abstraction and chiaroscuro; to attenuate line and shadow by expanding the range of gray and black tonality. These surface alterations render each print unique.

The evolution of my work has resulted in a thematic thread of kineticism in the image, (mostly with figurative themes); large grids; scrolls; frescoes, progressing to an integration of three-dimensional projections for the stage, to the moving image on film - both narrative and documentary - all informed by the photographic film plane.

The original photographs were created without any reliance on contemporary technology. The method is purely photographic, using basic darkroom chemistry. This movie was implemented in Macromedia Flash.

Mythic Silhouettes (1975)
Photographic narratives based on real images combine with an interior, imaginary landscape. The photographs reflect the inner journey --layered imagery, diaphanous. A translucent surface alters depth relationships -- images recede
and appear.
(11" x 14")

Mythic Silhouettes (1983) second series - Pioneers; Knights

Photographic Inscriptions (1986)
Much larger, (60" x 80"), images and grain explode -- an analysis of line and texture.

Harem Suites (1990)
Inspired by ceiling paintings from Dynasty 18, Egypt, 1417 C. C. The surface of the negative is a canvas -- interpreted, altered. The printing process becomes a complex and discrete phase unto itself - adding gray tones, expanding the narrative. Using the enlarger light as a paintbrush, etching stone, or charcoal, an imagined landscape is juxtaposed around the reality of the photographic image.
(80" x 90")

Spirit Seekers (1991)
A fusion of contemporary photographic reality with the tradition of 15th Century Zen aesthetic and craftsmanship resulting in a series of triptych and single panel scrolls. Silver prints are mounted on linen with hand-made paper borders. The monochrome tones range from the richest black through delicate grays to the whiteness of traditional photographic paper. The format of the scrolls supports a deeper exploration of the single image. By blasting the negative into sections, the image mirrors and re-interprets itself, informed by its own essence. A landscape of wings.

Ancient Voices (1992-1993)
Frescoes. Photographic images transferred onto hand-made papers. Color.
Wall fragments. Myths.

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