Lindsay Sparagana

This project fused the creativity of two generations of people to produce an installation of their artwork. Adolescents from Northern Home for Children and New Courtland resident senior citizens worked together using plastic Holga camera to make black and white photographs during class time. The partners edited contact sheets of their images together and selected photographs to be turned into digital negatives. Since we were working at a nursing home and did not have access to a darkroom, we used the cyanotype process to make photographs. Cyanotype is an alternative photographic process that involves treating a surface with iron salts that react to ultraviolet light. In this case, we used the sun as our UV light source to produce vivid blue photographs on cotton.

The senior coated the cotton with cyanotype solution, and the adolescents took them outside to be washed and dried in the sun. The artists were responsible for staining and finishing the wooden cubes that became home to the cyanotypes. When presented to the public, the cubes were stacked on top of one another in columns. This allowed the viewer to circle around the cubes at eye-level to observe all of the fine details of the photographs. Each column represented the relationship and teamwork by pairs of artists that resulted in a three dimensional class portrait.