sunsets, yellow film and other finds

Lisa recommended reverse garbage as a place to check out, and since last weekend I’ve been twice. It’s a co-operative which diverts industrial and other waste from landfill, and sells it for next to nothing for creative projects, etc. It’s a great, full of exciting materials and objects with endless possibilities. (Is there anything like this in Melbourne?) Among other things, I acquired a roll of reflective silver card and a roll of yellow 35mm film.



Something about the yellow film seemed to be calling out to me - I felt like I really needed to have it. The whole roll is the same (has it been accidentally exposed? I don’t know enough about film to say.) But its yellowness, and the potential for that to be transformed by light, to transform light, is compelling. I thought about ways to project it, and in the absence of a real 35mm projector, I imagined that it might be possible to use the sun to project it, and make a kind of “sun cinema”. I’m not sure if it would work, but theoretically if you position the film between the sun and a lens, and have some kind of device to crank it, I think it might project for a few minutes while the sun is in the right position. It could be a small event activated each day while the sun moves past the lens – a kind of sunset effect.




A few days ago there was a spectacular sunset over the park outside the studio, which turned everything yellow inside, without my needing to project any film.




For a while I’ve been photographing sunsets, for no other reason than an aesthetic delight in the endless variation of colour, and the half-blinding sensation of riding into low rays of light. Here are some from the last two weeks in Sydney.