NO MORE SITCOMS
STATEMENT No More Sitcoms consists of a series of platinum palladium prints made from 11 by 14 inch film exposed inside a pinhole camera made out of a holiday popcorn tin. The night exposures were 30 minutes long, catching on film the light trails of cars in drive-thrus and gas stations as nighttime consumerism flourishes. Platinum palladium printing is one of the oldest historic photographic processes, and one of the most expensive, using rare platinum metals rather than silver, the typical metal used in traditional photography. Platinum Palladium prints are the most beautiful photographic process, and additionally, they are the most permanent of printing processes—platinum palladium being among the most stable metals. The platinum palladium is hand painted onto artist’s paper in a liquid form, dried, and then contact printed from the night-exposed film onto the coated paper in the sun for 10 minutes. Although small for an artwork in our current times, an 11 by 14 inch platinum palladium print is extremely large in a historical context where the majority of platinum palladium prints done around its invention in the late 1800s were 4 by 5 inches or 8 by 10 inches at the largest. In this time of the death of television, using historic photographic processes draws attention to the genesis of modern media, and monumentalizes the current moment in consumer history forever. |