Tag Archives: solarisation

Photo Of The Week: Tee Corinne/Scars Project

I’ve been thinking about my friend Tee Corinne a lot lately, so I thought I’d put up this image as my Picture of the Week from her final project Scars, Stoma, Ostomy Bag, Portacath: Picturing Cancer in Our Lives, color solarized nudes of her lover Beverly Brown. She completed the project shortly before her own death in August of 2006.

This is a portrait of Tee and Beverly from the project.

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Tee wrote this about Scars, Stoma, Ostomy Bag, Portacath: Picturing Cancer in Our Lives


In February 2003, my lover of fourteen years was diagnosed with metastasized colon cancer. The surgeon said she’d be dead in a year and a half. As an artist, I needed something more immediate than the black and white darkroom practices I have used since the 1960s. So, early in the second year of our shared life with her cancer, I learned to use a digital camera, then Adobe Photoshop and new ways to process and print photographs. This altered way of working introduced drama and emotional coloration.

Often my world seemed like it was spinning out of control. Both of us experienced nausea, although for different reasons. Her body had been reconfigured by science. Without modern medicine, she would be dead. We passed the year-and-a-half mark. She went onto Hospice care, but didn’t die in the fall, as her oncologist had expected. Now, it is winter.

The social worker says that she may go from seeming to be healthy to being too ill to drive or take care of herself in a period of six hours. Any six hours. We don’t know when. She may then die within a few days to a few weeks. This scenario is expected to take place sometime within the next six months. Tumors in her liver. Expectations of cataclysmic change.

Problems keep developing from unexpected directions: anger, resentment, issues of abandonment, betrayal. Working together, we have begun to push the polite boundaries of portraiture.
These images we are making are collaborative. It does not matter which of us is behind the camera or if we use a self-timer. They are shaped by who we are, how we are responding to these constantly changing realities, and who we have been individually and together over the past sixteen years. The text and arrangement of the photographs are, for the most part, mine.

In my creative life, I have longed for this kind of partnering. I am so lucky to have been with her this long.

I just reread this post and thought I’d end by linking to a nude photo of Tee I took in my garden.

Solarization

Laurie says:

Artistically speaking solarization more or less reverses blacks and whites. It’s actually a lot more complex. Originally the effect came from drastically over-exposed film, then it became a darkroom technique, and now it is a digital one as well.

My friend Tee Corinne did all her work in darkroom solarization. This is her classic photograph from her Sinister Wisdom cover.

Sinister Wisdom cover

As I discussed in my Unexpected Art blog. I’ve been working for several months on new black and white prints (8.5 by 11 in) from Women en Large, Familiar Men and Women of Japan. The final group is Familiar Men and I did the first prints of them yesterday. One of the real joys has been finding ways that I can use digital techniques to enhance the work. Usually it’s in subtle and limited ways.

But when I was working on Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes photos with Ctein, there were 2 prints that really worked digitally solarized. This iconic one of Debbie looks beautiful in the solarized version but not better than the original.

Debbie Notkin

However solarizing this “Torso” photo from Women en Large was a different matter. I was very happy with the original print but I like this one far better. I’m really thrilled with it.

Torso

I wish Tee was alive to see them – particularly the “Torso” photo. She would have loved it.