Featured Photographer: Ed Carr's 5000+ Cyanotype Print Music Video
© Ed Carr
Ed Carr is an independent artist, printmaker, and researcher from the North York Moors National Park (UK). His alternative process-driven projects deal with the ecological crisis, in particular the emotional trauma and our material relationship to the nonhuman world. To accomplish this, he adapts traditional analog processes into animation - as well as innovating new animation techniques. For the last five years, Carr has been experimenting and creating animations that utilize natural materials, such as animations on wood, leaves, and soil - to create a material link between the work and the natural world that speak to the greater problems of our world through his art.
The artist’s most recent project, a music video for Tycho Jones from Globe Town Records, is a superb example of this, and it was created from over 5000 cyanotype prints! I know you're asking yourself, how the hell does someone create a music video, an animated one at that, out of cyanotypes? 5000 of them? How can it be sustainable? Well, that’s where it gets interesting. Before we dive in, watch the music video below!
Ed Carr was first contacted by Globe Town Records after individuals had shared his animations with them on Instagram. After speaking about what the label was trying to accomplish: producing a unique lo-fi production for Tycho Jone’s single “Don’t Be Afraid” they instantly knew he was the man for the job. They just needed to decide in which direction to go in color and in which alternative process. At the time, Carr was already experimenting with cyanotypes as moving images in animation through his project “A Guide to British Trees,” which feature clips ranging from a few seconds to half a minute that used animations on wood, leaves, and soil - to create a material link between the work and the natural world.
Up until that point though, the artist had never made a video longer than this, though he had the know-how and technical expertise to pull it off. In fact, he was already planning an experimental piece about increased flooding from climate change, as a follow-up to his hand-printed film on wildfires (using the lumen process) he had just completed.
With this in mind, Carr suggested the idea of a cyanotype-only video for Tycho, as a chance to finally attempt making one long animated piece. After speaking for a few days and working out the themes and styles that would best suit the song’s lyrics and Tycho as an artist, they were committed. As an added bonus, Carr was given the freedom to stay true to his own ideals and incorporate his own ideas around climate breakdown and its relationship to birds - while still representing Tycho’s musical vision. The commitment was just the beginning.
Over two and a half months, Carr went through various stages of bringing this music video to life. First, he captured, cataloged, and gathered a combination of digital assets and video and created a digital version of the video you just saw. This took almost 40% of the initial time to produce this project. Now comes the hard part: this was then split into individual frames, at 24 frames per second. This meant that he had 24 individual jpegs per second of footage - equalling over 5,000 frames in total! These frames were then turned into negatives and printed on biodegradable acetate using an eco-tank mono printer.
After Carr’s negatives were created, he went about creating his cyanotype prints which would eventually be digitized to create his final product. But this took time. He began working 12 hours days for what seemed like an eternity. He was only able to create, on average, 100 prints a day which resulted in over seven weeks of printmaking. That’s dedication! At first, he tried using the sun, as is normally used in this process but this proved to be too unreliable when attempting to create the massive amount of work he was pursuing. After receiving a generous donation of a UV bed by MAP charity, he was able to begin exposing 25 prints at a time, using ten-minute exposures. After exposure, he rushed them to the darkroom in a light sealed box, where he would then wash and fix them.
To save water, Carr opted for a static wash. Typically, you are advised to wash cyanotypes in running water - but for such a mammoth project, this would have consumed an inordinate amount of water. Instead, he used two trays filled with water, switching the prints between them. He also opted to spray the prints with white vinegar, instead of the widely used hydrogen peroxide, to exaggerate the mid-tones and bring out rich blues. It was more sustainable to use this organic material than the former chemicals. After printing and processing all the frames, he finally scanned them into Lightroom, cropped them so they would align, and processed them to create the final video, an effort that took another month of work.
The resulting music video is an artistic project that is the first of its kind. Carr has planned, executed, and presented using both 200-year-old photographic processes and the latest digital video editing techniques that have made a lasting impression on us here at Analog Forever Magazine. Bravo, Ed Carr, your work deserves the recognition it has received and we are thrilled to share it with our audience.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ed Carr is an independent artist and researcher from the North York Moors National Park based in Leeds, UK. His work deals with the ecological crisis, in particular the emotional trauma and our material relationship to the nonhuman world through the Sixth Mass Extinction of life.
He is the leader of the Northern Sustainable Darkroom, and has authored two papers on the subject of ecology and photography. Specifically, The Ecology of Grain, which is an environmental and ethical assessment of gelatine in analog film - and Stare into the Caffenol to Reveal Your Future, which proposes a decentralized network of darkrooms operating sustainably as an alternative to mainstream photo production.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Behlen is an instant film addict and the founder and publisher of Analog Forever Magazine. For the last 6 years, Behlen has become an obsessive community organizer in the film photography world, including launching the independent publishing projects PRYME Magazine and PRYME Editions, two enterprises dedicated to the art of instant film. Through these endeavors, he has featured and published 200+ artists from around the globe via his print and online publications.
He has self-published two Polaroid photobooks -“Searching for Stillness, Vol. 1” and “I Was a Pioneer,” literally a boxed set of his instant film work. His latest book, Searching for Stillness Vol II was published in 2020 by Static Age. He has been published, been interviewed, and been reviewed in a quantity of magazines and online publications, from F-Stop and Blur Magazine to the Analog Talk Podcast. He loves the magic sensuality of instant film: its saturated, surreal colors; the unpredictability of the medium; it’s addictive qualities as you watch it develop. He spends his time shooting instant film and backpacking in the California wilderness, usually a combination of the two.
Connect with Michael Behlen on his Website and on Instagram!
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