ReTouch

This picture was taken of me when I was 16 and lived on a 'hippie commune' in north-eastern Vermont.

I probably hadn't seen a mirror (or a bath) for several months, and all these years later the photograph too was a little worse for wear.

It was all schmutzy and cracked, and wasn't all that great of a photo in the first place; technically speaking, the highlights are all blown out. But it's one of the few images of me during that time and it WAS funky, so I chose it as my 're-touch' project.

There was some really strange 'banding' in it and Chris suggested a short-cut 'fix' (de-saturate it so that the bands flattened out) which seemed to work pretty well. I'd thought I would tint the resulting monoprint and started with some cheek color, but I wasn't sure the effect was worth the time, so I stopped before doing any more.

I wished I had a badly damaged old family portrait that I could have made my family happy by fixing, but I couldn't find anything like that. Ah well, c'est la vie.