DORIS MITSCH - STATEMENT

One is trying to say everything that can be said

for the things that one loves while there’s still time.

– W. S. Merwin

 

I’m looking for perspectives on this heartbreaking, beautiful world. A review once described my work as “fleshy and tender.” That’s more or less what I’m after.

 

A FEW NOTES ABOUT PROCESS:

The photos of flight trails (birds, bees, etc.) aren't time-lapse images, but composite digital photographs combining hundreds and sometimes thousands of shots taken over the course of a few seconds or a couple of minutes, showing the same animals in different positions in space over time.

 

And the process I use for some of my still lifes is a bit unusual, with digital technology replacing not only the darkroom, but the camera as well. I sometimes use a flatbed scanner as a camera, which offers interesting opportunities and limitations. Unlike a traditional camera, a scanner captures an image by slowly moving both the light and the lens across the subject, essentially lighting and photographing it from multiple angles in one long exposure. This produces a single image stitched together from thousands of tiny slivers, to which I then make endless, minute adjustments. This offers a view that can't be seen through a camera lens or by the naked eye, and a kind of illumination that can't be duplicated with fixed lights. It also offers a uniquely detailed view, as I magnify each image and work on it down to a level of detail that will never be seen in the finished print. Full-resolution prints of some of the images can be as wide as sixty inches, and enlargements as big as 300 inches (25 feet) wide have been made without significant loss of detail.

 

People sometimes refer to this kind of work as scanner photography, scanography, scanograms, art scans, scanning, and so on. I still call it photography, because "photo-graph" means a picture made with light, and today there are many alternative processes for making photographs, including various camera-less methods.

 

 

A NOTE ABOUT THE NAME:

People often misspell my last name or assume it's the same as my husband's. If you're looking for the artist "Doris Mitch" or the photographer "Doris Barden," that's me.