FRAMES AIR: JUSTYNA NERYNG

FRAMES Artist-in-Residence December 2022: Justyna Neryng

PART 1 – PART 2 – PART 3 – PART 4 – PART 5

PART 1 – DECEMBER 4, 2022

W. Scott Olsen in conversation with Justyna Neryng, introducing our next Artist-in-Residence, talking about her work and her plans for this particular FRAMES Artist-in-Residence series.

Justyna Neryng is a Polish born, self-taught photographic artist, with a background in fashion and painting. She works with analog and digital cameras with a particular interest in portraiture and the human body. She has won several awards and had her work exhibited and recognised by the Royal Photographic Society. She lives and works in the United Kingdom.

Leave your questions to Justyna in the comment section below and he will do his best to answer them all.

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PART 2 – DECEMBER 11, 2022

THE ONGOING MOMENT

Making big art in a small room

For the last ten years or so I have been using my living space as a studio. It comes with its own creative limitations of space, I always feel I need more. But it is a safe womb-like space I have created to explore ideas and generate my work. I started to use the space when I photographed my then young daughter for my “Childhood lost” project which I have been honoured to have published in FRAMES.

Since then the space has developed, with the addition of colour rolls, lights and flags. Still learning my way with lighting, but it is all part of the creative journey. The space is a place I can truly call mine and it is perhaps a sacred space for my collaborators and models to feel safe in. The creative energy of my practise steeped in its walls and furnishings. Something that would not be available to me in a hired studio. The space changes a little with each project I undertake, constantly shifting in its layout and purpose.

ARTIST’S HOME

ARTIST’S STUDIO

PREPARATION BEFORE THE SHOOT

PHOTO SESSION NUMBER 1

For this shoot I have asked Frankie to work with me. She is one of my favorite models/collaborators. I have photographed her many times over the past 10 years in which time we have got to know each other very well and became good friends.

Frankie is a life model and creative in her own right, so our working relationship is often an exchange of ideas.

FRANKIE’S PORTRAIT

NOTES ON BLACK & WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

Colour is often my first choice of shooting. But b&w photography unlike colour has the power to transcend the reality. As soon as something is in b&w it sends a signal that we are already one step out of it. It is not how we see the world, but how the camera sees the world. The lack of colour gives a space in the image for interpretation, for the mindeye to fill in the gaps. A potential for ambiguity, for some poetry to enter the frame.

I have tried to do this with my colour photography, the colour in my images is not always really what was there, but it still anchors the viewer closer to our reality than the photographic reality in a way that black and white does not. It’s a new journey for me. Trying to see in terms of tone and spills of light. As part of this journey I have decided to undertake both analogue and digital processes to see how this might help me re-discover the photograph.

CONCEPT OF THE SHOOT

The aim is to produce a couple of images, as a diptych , shooting both medium format Fujifilm GFX 50S II and Mamiya RB 67 in black and white. My intent is to use the digital camera as a way of finding the image. To test experiment with light and form and see where the shoot is going and then use the analogue camera when I feel I am on firmer ground to capture the images.

Going back to analogue and especially into a wet darkroom is something I have not done for years. A photographic journey all the way back to my childhood and memories of the darkroom and my father. I am both excited and terrified by the idea, but this is a good place for an artist to be. If you know the outcome is, it is probably not worth doing.

So I am using this as an opportunity to do some exploring of both my memories and my process and to see what happens.

Diptych…

Why Diptych?

I have worked with these in the past and am fascinated by the way they infer a passage of time between one shot and another. They expose a process of how the images were made, getting back to that idea of dialogue. The images converse with each other and invite the viewer to join the conversation.

Working with diptych is also, perhaps, away of making the images stand out from the ocean of photographs we find ourselves in. It is a open ended process. This is why I enjoy making images for myself, rather than a client, so much. It becomes a journey, with an unclear destination.

At this stage I have no idea how the images will come together but am trusting that black and white, working with my trusted collaborators and trusting in my own story will be enough to reveal… something!

DIGITAL LIGHT TEST

DIGITAL SKETCHES

ANALOGUE

1 POLAROID TEST & 10 SHOTS

Next week I will be printing my photos of Frankie in the darkroom.

Leave your questions to Justyna in the comment section below and he will do his best to answer them all.

PART 3 – DECEMBER 18, 2022

THE DARKROOM

This is very exciting for me, my first visit to an analogue darkroom since childhood!

Until now I have always scanned my negatives which still leads me to edit in Photoshop and I have so missed the alchemical magic that happens in the darkroom. This is by no means a “how to” tutorial but rather a document of my journey on the darkroom. I wasn’t trying to make the perfect print. That I can do with much more control with digital editing. I wanted to rediscover what a photograph could look like. I wanted to embrace the messy outcomes, the mistakes, the process, all those marks left by the process that have been “ironed out” of digital photography.

Perhaps, just as importantly, I wanted to revisit the memories of my father in the darkroom during my childhood.

There seems to be an increase of interest in analogue photography. Many of my collaborators in the studio are young people raised on only digital photography that have a deep fascination with the “old” processes. It perhaps my many conversations with these sitters that put the idea in my head of a return to the darkroom. These images are made in a beautiful community darkroom near where I live. The very physical nature of the darkroom makes it feel like a creative womb to create work in. As soon as I entered I could feel a rush of excitement that no editing computer has ever given me. I felt like I was home.

I might be home but I have no idea where the kitchen is! This is me confronted by a 35mm contact sheet press. The half smile as I realise I am printing from 120 roll film and trying to remember how on earth I make a contact sheet with that.

Prints in the drying rack after a very creative if not frustrating day in the darkroom. It now is up to me to find a way of combining the ways I work digitally with analogue.

I have fallen in love the darkroom again and if a can workout how to fit it into my practise, I will be returning here time and time again. Perhaps making digital negatives to print from.

Next week I will be back in the studio , behind and in front of the camera.

Leave your questions to Justyna in the comment section below and he will do his best to answer them all.

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PART 4 – DECEMBER 27, 2022

“I give my soul now one face, now another, according to which direction I turn it. If I speak of myself in different ways, that is because I look at myself in different ways. All contradictions may be found in me.”

Michel de Montaigne

QUICK ARTIST PORTRAIT

About self portraiture
as a process

As an artist, I often use myself ,mainly to experiment, occasionally creating art in my own image, immortalising myself in the process.

I don’t make a lot of projects but the ones I have done are very much an outcome of a self portrait. And it’s always handy to have a model on hand when you have a good idea too.

Self portraiture is something I find increasingly fascinating. Obviously we are not talking about the ubiquitous selfie, but rather a dialogue with myself via the medium of photography. As I have grown older the way I look at myself has changed. I feel braver, becoming increasingly more honest with the images I make.

This “brave honesty” is something I have come to, through my self portraits, but now apply when making images of others. So many people come to me wanting to be part of my work, and I think it is because they are drawn to this honesty.

I have also become quite fascinated by artists working with found images and collage. Especially the work of John Stezaker. I am trying to adopt a similar process but by looking at my own images as “found” rather than hard fought for. They are hard fought for, while I am in the studio, but I try to come to them “fresh” when I select or edit.

I love the way Dirk Braeckman works to. Leaving his negatives to “mature” for years before taking them into the darkroom having completely forgotten the reasons for making the image in the first place. It’s a bold process and in terms of time not one I feel I can afford to do just yet.

So my self portraits are not only a dialogue between me and the camera, but also with other photographers I admire. It is a way for me to find a way of doing things, and to introduce an element of play into my process. I can endlessly experiment without feeling the pressure of keeping sitters happy, or any time constraints.

Session 1 – Studio Setup

First Attempt

Background Change

Second Attempt

Contact Sheet

Quick Edit

Final Images

SPECIAL GUEST

My special guest today is Nell , my daughter (the girl from Childhood Lost series) . In fact it was her idea!

I described the Childhood Lost project as a “series of self portraits in a different body” at the time. I still look back at it with much pride and emotion. Nell has since grown into woman and represents a completely different generation to me. So I can no longer really use her as a stand in for me, she is so much her own person now. We decided to focus more on our relationship both as mother and daughter and as friends.

I have been inspired for many years by the work of Pina Bausch, first seeing her work in the film “Pina” by Wim Wenders. The way she finds a new language of the body, the unusual and awkward forms often find their way into my own work. I wanted to explore this with Nell, to perhaps find a way to “perform” our relationship to the camera. These may be the stepping stones to something more with Nell, or perhaps with other models.

First Attempt

Final Shot

These photographs of Nell and I are works in progress really and hopefully a beginning of a new series we will collaborate on for the next few years . I never know how long I will have Nell as a part of a project. She has her own life now, and although we have found a common interest with the idea of dance, performance and photography, she will always have the last say in these projects, which only makes these times and shoots together all the more precious.

A lot has changed with my approach to photography since I shot Childhood Lost, and working with Nell again has really highlighted this. Gone are the elaborate costumes and painterly compositions of Childhood Lost, my practise has become so much more pared back. Focusing more on the relationship between my sitters and me, and this is never more the case that when I work with Nell.

I hope this is a project that I can revisit over the coming years to document the relationship’s development and our inevitable aging and changing roles in life.

Next week I will be printing small test prints.

Leave your questions to Justyna in the comment section below and he will do his best to answer them all.

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PART 5 – JANUARY 5, 2023

I make the majority of my prints digitally, using giclee processes. Although I have a love of the analogue darkroom and was so privileged to make some prints for the project as I would have done in my childhood, my photography has had to change with the times. So many analogue papers have disappeared and the variety of papers offered by giclee printing is hard to match. Digital printing also gives me a lot more choice when considering the size of the final images. I have made prints in the past on a really large scale, over 2 meters on the longest side. Quite a straightforward process using giclee but a very expensive and time consuming achievement in an analogue darkroom.

Digital printing also offers so much more control than analogue. Of course you lose all those serendipitous moments, the happy accidents of the darkroom, but nothing beats digital when it comes to control and consistency.

I use a local photographer to do my printing that makes prints for a select group of artists for exhibition as well as for museums.

The prints are made with an EPSON P9500, one of the actual machines Hahnemuhle use to calibrate their papers on. Perhaps unsurprisingly then I tend to use Hahnemühle papers when making my prints with a preference for fine art pearl, which has a lovely finish and great tonal range, especially for black and white.

I start by running a test strip to make sure the head alignment is correct, and then a test strip of the actual image. Usually they have to be brightened a touch in the mid tones as we are so used to looking at images that are backlit rather than on paper. Once adjustments have been made we roll out the final print.

The prints are checked using a loupe to ensure there are no imperfections. And then trimmed ready to be hand signed and numbered. As these are artists proofs they just tend to get dated, so I can keep track.

I tend to try and live the prints for a while so they help to inform me of what to do moving
forward. There is certainly quite a difference between the hands on punk attitude of the wet dark room verses the clinical process of making inkjet prints.

Prints Presentation

Final Choice

I have been toying with the idea of getting more hands on with the inkjet process, to add hand painted elements, perhaps even hand tinting images printed on a suitable fine art paper. I am very mindful of the medium in which I am working. The light and chemistry of the wet darkroom has its own dialogue, and I would like to develop something like this with the ink used in the giclee process. I am very inspired by the work of Jan Sudeck which could be a start point for me and a development of this project.

I hope I have given some insight into my process and certainly that it is a continuous process, always being revised and explored.

Thank you FRAMES for this opportunity and I am grateful for the support of this
community.

Justyna Neryng

Leave your questions to Justyna in the comment section below and he will do his best to answer them all.

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