[This is a translation from a previous post of mine hosted here]
It was early in the eighties, when I was just a little child and my parents, who have just left to be ones — maybe cause of me, more than anything else — they were doing all the possible in order to keep floating a recently made family (rather the impossible since it has to be said that it wasn't easy at all), that the iconic Polaroid photography was entering very slowly and with troubles, at first, into the market of the images production in my country (Colombia), with its astounding novelty, almost mysterious and overwhelming by those days.
It was a difficult thing to explain oneself how it was possible that, suddenly, all the complex technical process and the lengthy ritual which used to start with the dangerous task of unmount the negative film cassette, without ripping it inside the camera and without ruining it by an accidental exposure to the light at the moment when you were opening the machine wrongly thinking, maybe, that the whole plastic strip of film had been rolled in within the cassette and it was there, safe from the light (some kind of mysterious procedure which an ordinary citizen, without any initiation, couldn't do in the right way), to afterwards take it to the photo lab and wait patiently, several days, until finally you could discover how many of the photos inside the envelope handed by the photo lab had been saved for the memories, and which-ones of them had been left damned to the ghosts gallery (that we must to admit, they fill a room so important as enigmatic within the familiar albums); to explain oneself then, how this all lengthy ritual itself could come to synthesize into the dark "tiny" precinct of a device which fitted in the hands, and how could it be fully developed in the term of just a second, ending with the device spiting a faultless photo and by the way, already framed.
The novelties and the wonders of technology were in general, however, something out of the reach for most of the people, and not everybody was able to get one of the blissful revolutionary little devices which nowadays we recognize immediately as a Polaroid camera (although they didn't come to be massively spread, at least in Colombia) and that are currently being rediscovered within the nests of enthusiastic people about nostalgic merchandise: that aesthetic way which try to bring again the lost time through things drawn off from their own era, that some people calls Vintage and some others “retro”.
I know it because in my home there was once, for an instant, a Polaroid camera, and it wasn't because my family were comfortably established on that thin layer of privileges that can afford the access to exclusive things, but on the contrary, as I’ve said at first: because mi father was starting in the seek for a way to earn resources to solve the survive needs for the family, one which might led him into a career in the world of business, where he was also starting; he had a job then as a Polaroid cameras salesman.
That mustn't have been very successful nor have produced that much because as far as I know, it didn’t last, but they rest from those days within my family's pictures collection, scrambled with all the others, a few of which I guess have been the firsts Polaroid snapshots taken in the country.
Since I remember them, these photos have always been my favorite ones, though I never knew for sure if the most it liked me was the quality of their colors (usually stronger, sharper and more contrasted than those of the other ones) or the nice and stylish that they look into their white frame. But later I’ve discovered that some of the fascination they produce on me it’s related with the fact that all of them portraits daily scenes or purely ordinary moments, and remote from that ceremonial or celebration atmosphere which is easy to find in the old photos. I ignore if this is something about the snapshots in general, but at least it happens like this with all the mine, maybe it has more to do with the circumstantial and temporary fact that my father was walking around there with one of those cameras by cause of his job.
There was one within those snapshots which always appealed to me strongly, in it was seen a young man smoking and drinking something red, after have had lunch, with an almost empty dish before him. The scene is unusually enlightened but surrounded by a thick dark atmosphere.
The man in the portrait is my father, any day many years ago, having lunch; the painting on the top of this post is a reproduction made by me, some time ago, oil painting on paperboard; the original image, the snapshot has been “mysteriously” lost, some time after I made the portrait. It’s quite possible that has been me who has “lost it” just after have made it. This is my first portrait in oil painting technique and also one of my first painting works, any way, the first one which I could in solve color troubles with some success.
I share it here as a sample of my work, I attach some details images...
First: the enlightenment and contrast effect was achieved by using complementary-contraire colors (greens/reds), and strong variations in the tonal grades. Added to this, the differences within brush-strokes from the front layers (more detailed and accurated) to the back layers (more free and random) they get a considerable distance on spatiality and deepness.
The integration of the character into the atmosphere was achieved by vanishing the limits, almost imperceptible or non-existent at all, in between the dark areas or the shady ones and the background color. This originates continuities and also communicate the different layers of the image.
The objects and surfaces enlightenment was made by adding light-colors (whites, yellows...) over the tones to enlighten or by shading them with the applying of shadow veils, without admitting to any of both being purely and plain overlapped: the lights and the shadows they have color as grades, they react and answer to the volume shapes as wrappers.
And finally, here it's the portrait's portrait and a portrait of who's writing you, ¿any resemblance?
Well, that's all for now, I hope you've enjoyed it and thanks for read my posting thread.
I'm sorry about all the writing, grammar and idioms mistakes you could have found out in this post, I'm just learning this language, thanks again.