Buster Levi Gallery located in the Village of Cold Spring is pleased to announce the exhibition of color photographs by Lucille Tortora. It will open on Friday June 2nd and continue through Sunday July 2nd. The public is invited to the opening for the artist on Friday, June 2nd 6-8 pm.
The color photographs in this show are unique in that they have used film as the source and digital as the printing process. Tortora shot these images using a “toy” Holga camera that she modified by removing the camera’s insides and advancing the film manually. The images have a gauzy transparency, which comes from double and triple exposing the film in the camera. Tortora had no way of knowing exactly how the image would duplicate and triplicate itself. It was accidental. The transparency is part of the film. The results are magical layered images, at once liberating and accidental, all created in her camera.
These images are Tortora’s first in color.
For over thirty-five years, Lucille Tortora has been capturing the abstract shape and geometry of her world in classic, black and white gelatin silver montaged prints. Her constructions, strongly influenced by cubism and the interplay of dark and light, have been composed using individual images captured by her Hasselblad, then painstakingly arranged into montages highlighting the interplay of shapes. Her main focus was black and white. Color was on the sidelines.
Since 1999, Lucille has been carrying her “toy” Holga alongside her other gear … so these color photographs were taken at the same time as her black and white images. The color work is not really an extension of her previous work. Instead it was capturing the same object with two different tools. However, Tortora had only a black and white darkroom, the film was put aside.
Tortora had long resisted digital photography. To her, it looked as if the technique controlled the photographer’s vision. But in this new digital world, printing pictures was easy. Her film was drum scanned at a very high resolution, which preserved the film grain beautifully. With a high-end Epson printer and an inventory of imported papers and archival inks, these twelve images were crafted. Adjustments were made in Photoshop using conventional darkroom tools like burning and dodging, adjusting color and such.
Lucille continues to use the technique she developed.
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