Sunday 4 May 2014

Postcard secrets pinned down

I've been working away on my print series and a few other things for months now, hence the fall off in blogposts. For the last two weekends, I've been framing, framing, framing. Today I decided to photograph everything to get a feel for how the images look all together.
The main series consists of 'secrets' gleaned from old postcards. By 'secrets' I mean details that are not what the eye sees when it takes in the postcard image in the normal way. In some cases the images are barely visible to the naked eye in the original. I've taken these details and reconstituted them as postcards in their own right, complete with the original captions. I feel this link back to the source of the image is important. The images are strange and unexplained, perhaps rendered even more so when presented as picture postcards. I really like the slightly surreal feeling of some of them: strange, fleeting figures or lonely people isolated in a busy scene. I hope other people will like them -- I'm intending to have them for sale at my open studio days in September. They won't be expensive.
This is probably my favourite print.
I like this one too as I was thrilled to find a naked lady caught unawares through a chalet window. She is tiny in the original. (Both the above pics come from the same original postcard, a wonderful find.)
I like this one too. Well, obviously I like them all, as I created them. It's been very satisfying to make them. Here are some more:

















That's probably enough images for now. I'll save the other series for another post. I'd love to know if you like them. The photos aren't perfect but that's slightly deliberate to discourage copying.

5 comments:

Anna said...

Really interesting prints Jane, what a lot of framing! Do you buy the frames ready made or cut them yourself? They look good.

colleen said...

Well I for one absolutely love them, that making the ordinary moment in a hubbub or landscape into something extraordinary.

I was thinking of your approach to research only this morning when I was re-reading some of "A Very Private Eye", a selection from Barbara Pym's diaries: " She had always had a passion for 'finding out' about people who interested or attracted her. tracking people down and looking them up were part of her absorbing interest...in research into the lives of ordinary people"

Kitsch and Curious said...

Love them! I like some of the more surreal, random ones, but I think my favourite is the last one from Bognor (probably because it's quite kitsch, somehow. Great work, as ever!

LAC EMP 2020 said...

Only you could find that naked lady in the window! You have an eye for the life less ordinary. The prints are great and even more impressive for being framed by you too. I'm adding my name to the other positive comments. Good luck with them at the open studios - that's if you haven't sold them all by then!

Gina said...

They are fabulous - such an interesting range and variety of prints.