Holiday Blues. Cyanotype on paper.

Series of 2 editions of 3.

2021

A short series of prints I did while on holiday in France this summer.

The name Holiday Blues holds two distinct meanings for me: firstly the cyan colour of the cyanotypes themselves, and of what they represent: a summer sky, the ripples of a pool surfaces. Normally cyanotypes change the colour of the scenes or objects they represent: obliterating all hues and replacing them by different depths of chemical blues: but here the originals were already blue, so printing them as a cyanotype was an obvious choice. I toyed with inverting the images, so that the blues became whites and the whites blues, to surprise and confuse the viewer, but on this occasion I liked the fact that the image was a close witness of the scene it depicted.

The second meaning of blues of course is the sentiment of sadness. In both images, the bird lost sky high, the unfathomable deep end of the swimming pool, a certain loneliness or quiet despair can surface. The images may appear true to what they represent, but look deeper and different feelings unfold.