Contact Sheets

I've recently started scaning contact sheets as not only do they give an insight into the thought processes going on in my head at the time of the shoot but also they are such a viseral reminder of the analogue world of photography that I inhabited at the the time.

For those of you who have never set foot in a darkroom (a place I must have spent literally years of my life in!) a contact sheet is so called because the actual negatives (colour or BW) are placed on a light sensitive piece of paper and a sheet of glass placed over them so that they are flat and 'in contact' with the paper before the enlarger light is turned on to make the exposure.

Then the paper is slid into the developer, the stop bath (to stop the action of the developer, the fixer (to fix the image and stop in darkeing over time) before thorough washing to remove all the chemicals and preserve the print archivally. 

Sometimes these visual sheets of the whole roll of film are referred to as Proof Sheets as it iis from these that the selection is made as to which frames to enlarge into a print to used for whatever purpose it migh be required (reproduction in a book or magazine or to be used as an artwork on a wall.

The selections were made using either a chinagraph pencil (like a waxy crayon in a pencil form) or using a highlighter and you can see these marks either I (or in some cases the artist themselves) made on the sheets at the time of the shoot on these digital scans.

A real piece of visual history.