Seeing Double
Analog photography meets surrealism.
In 2019 Liza created a series of surreal portraits by layering two negatives for an analog print. With this project, Liza not only experimented with analog techniques, but also explored how people fit into their environments, imbuing her photos with her own sentiments on getting accustomed to living alone in a new city.
The Process
Step 1: Shooting Film
For this project, Liza combined studio portrait photography with abstracted detail shots of New York City. Typically, her photography tends to be unstaged and unplanned, so this project pushed her to work with models in a controlled environment while still adding an element of spontaneity and exploration.
Pictured left: Liza exploring the city with her Pentax K1000.
Step 2: Contact sheets
After getting the shots and developing the film, Liza created contact sheets. In order to see which photos could layer well together, she often used the "invert colors" setting on her phone to see the negatives as they would print.
Step 3: Layering
The first time Liza stumbled upon layering of negatives was when two half-negatives fell on top of one another by accident and she thought they looked pretty cool (pictured top left). She then began experimenting with deliberate layering of negatives, carefully aligning them so the two photos complement each other.
Pictured bottom left: a preview of Layed Portrait 3. Bottom right: the prepared negatives for Layered Portrait 4 in a film holder, ready to be used for printing.
Step 4: Printing and Reprinting
Due to the complexity of the photos, Liza had to do a lot of experimenting with printing techniques to make sure all parts of the two negatives were properly exposed in the printing process. Many test strips were made (top right). Even after finding the right exposure, sometimes the print would come out with under-worked areas and/or misalignment of negatives (bottom left). Through this process, Liza learned to perfect her printing technique, utilizing various printing filters, exposure combinations, and dodging / burning (final print: bottom right).
Step 5: Assembly and Presentation
For the presentation of the film project, Liza complied all the best prints she got and experimented with combining them. She wanted the final to have a compositional flow to it, along with showcasing only the best of her work. To visualize the final result, she quickly imported her pieces into Photoshop and played around with presentation. She matted some of the pieces that looked better in black.
