The Dark Room
Microscopic images made into digital negatives.
Test prints: experiments with incorporating indigo dye in different phases of the salt printing and cyanotype processes, exploring techniques of applying formula onto the surface area,
Microscopic view of indigo surrounded by indigofera: Natural indigo pigment + cyanotype formula on silk canvas.
Returning home with a stack of slides and finally the right equipment to capture my images in hires, I began the documentation. By matching the lens of the Fujifilm XH-1 to the eyepiece, I was able to retain the circular planet-like frame I had been obsessed with from the first moment I set eyes on indigo under the microscope.
After developing the initial ideas of the project from the comfort of my home, where I used a borrowed school microscope to capture some initial images of the indigo dye mixed with household substances and photographing them using my iPhone (the only lens that would match with the eyepiece of the microscope), I took to BITS Pilani to move into a more of a controlled environment with high-grade equipment and access to more potent substances.
I created two batches of indigo mixed with a range of chemicals with the intension of documenting their behaviour overtime when stored at polar environments: +37C and -20C. After documenting the slides at conception, I stored one batch in a oven-like heated box and the other in a cold room, and returned the following day to document the reactions.
0 hours (at conception) 19 hours later after being stored at +37C
Top : photographed through the Zeiss Primo Star inbuilt camera
Bottom: photographed through the eyepiece using my iPhone
As you can see from the examples above of the same slide the reactions after being exposed to difference environments are vastly different (this was the most extreme difference in states I found from my samples).
The cropped sensor of the inbuilt camera and rectangular perspective completely lost all character as a stand-alone image for me, so I was back to capturing the images through the eyepiece to retain that globe like frame.
