Long Exposure
I used to spend whole summers in my grandparents’ old house, reading book after book and exploring every corner of that fascinating place. The best area to explore was the attic. It was quiet and dark, every room had its distinct smell and everywhere you looked there were boxes full of old stuff to discover. Many of the objects you can see in this photo came from that house and the warm, woody feel is directly inspired by those rooms. The young soldier in the photo is actually my grandfather sometime around 1940. But the idea for this picture actually started elsewhere.
Although you can't really call it a still life, this photo was meant to be one. It all began with the objects you see in the background. I knew I wanted to make a photo inspired by memento mori paintings, but it was hard to find the right angle. Memento mori ("be mindful of death"), is a genre defined first and foremost by its message, speaking to the brevity of life and its pleasures. With its subgenre "vanitas" (vanities), this kind of paintings were mostly popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, specifically among painters of the low countries (although not exclusively). They often included a skull, a watch (or an hourglass) and flowers, all of which speak to our limited time on earth and the transient nature of life’s pleasures.
Another aesthetical influence for this photo came from the Netflix show Freud. It’s a part historical part fantasy show portraying Freud’s early years as a young doctor in Vienna and it showcases a period that I love- the turn of the twentieth century, a time of explosive creativity and research in European history (for good and bad). All that made me want to create a photo showcasing the power of the mind and imagination and to juxtapose it with the idea of ephemerality and death.
These ideas were then to be merged with the subject of the day- "long exposure". I wanted to create an image that echoed with this little girl I was, head deep in her fantasy world. The initial though was to use long exposure to move the book up and down and create an illusion of the book rising up to her reading face, luring her in. Not surprisingly though, this effect was unattainable with the means I had (being alone and not ready to engineer a system to get the book pulled up without my hand or face moving). So instead of fighting my own movement, I decided to take advantage of it.
I used a ventilator to help the pages flip (BTW pages are the most flappable when the book is freshly opened, a book that stays open for too long loses this effect). And with time I came up with a choreography that would end up showing a woman reading, with two hands on the table and a face coming out of the book, all at once.
I had my shutter open for 5 seconds, starting with my face towards the book and one hand leaning on the table while the other was flipping the pages to get them going. Then I turned my face to the right, then to the left, and then put the other hand on the table to have a final image of both hands leaning on each side. Finally, I lent back just in time for the flash.
Lighting-wise I had a key light with a red gel, set on rear curtain sync. I wanted it to freeze whatever happened right before the shutter closed rather than when it opened so I’d get the red face as sharp as possible (I tried both ways- first curtain sync with a reverse choreography too, but it was clearly looking better with RCS). There was a background light coming from the “caravaggioesque” upper left corner and a fill light on the "reading face".
This fill light was not your traditional light… I was out of professional lights and had to use a reading lamp. To attenuate the intensity of that light and focus it on my face and the book alone I patched up this Pringles grid (notice I left plenty of space for the heat to be released).
While shooting I also had a blue plastic bag covering the holes to make the temperature somewhat colder…
The editing process was quite interesting, I sent it to a couple of friends to see what they would come up with. One of the edits they created brought out the warm and cold light temperatures in a way that balanced the photo really well. I went along with this idea when I did my own version.
The skeleton engraving belonged to my grandfather who was a doctor. It was part of a collection of plates engraved by Andreas Vesalius in the 16th century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_humani_corporis_fabrica).