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Portrait of a monsoon: Making the print, Part 1

by Mahen Bala· May 13, 2016· in Journal· 0 comments tags: analogue, art, develop, film, horizon, longest, method, monsoon, photography, print, process, scanning
I frequently make the mistake of not writing about my work. Here’s a brief guide on how I produced an 8 meter long print from my Portrait of a monsoon series. I’ve been told that it is the longest photographic print ever produced in the country. This essay explores some of the technical and conceptual challenges behind the entire process. Prep The idea was to photograph the horizon from the same position, over a span of time, on a seamless roll of film. A series of photographs, all of them overlapping to produce an even longer photograph, but of many moments. Growing up on the east coast, the impossible line was my guide, a teacher with whom I would repeatedly seek counsel in times of distress. It separated the sky from the sea and yet, it only exists because of those two elements. Life in the city was governed by vertical lines and I, a child of the horizontal line, could not fit in. I felt an intense desire to capture it as a photograph, and there was no better time to do it than the monsoon. Prep began in January. Now, most cameras are designed to capture images as […]
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