As someone who is technologically impaired and who’s never used photoshop before, delving into this world came as a challenge (despite our handy guide by Anna).
Since a starting point for our Manifesto title is ‘Homo Sapiens to Homo Digitalis’, I thought I would visually explore the notion of Nature vs Nurture, Humanity Vs Technology.
I thought of an image that strongly represented the negative effects of technology and came up with the Hiroshima Atomic Strike image. Wanting to juxtapose this with something natural, I thought visually a flourishing tree holds a similar form to a mushroom cloud and so set about attempting to combine these images with the limited knowledge I had.
(Perhaps I could explore this idea further with different types of cloud, naturally and chemically produced).
Initially I changed the Hiroshima image to a blue scale in order to remove it from its original appearance as a black and white photograph. I wanted to make it feel more like a satellite image, to suggest perhaps we’d gained distance and perspective since the event but also to prepare it for the addition of the tree. Satellite images of the earth are often blue, white and green and so I wanted to explore this colour combination.
I also tried it in just black and white to see how the tree could be blended into the image.
I then tried different colour combinations to see how this changed the impact of the image. I think this felt more otherworldly, an idea I’d be interested to explore since conversations about humans populating the moon (e.g. Elon Musk).
Finally I tried black and white, heightening the contrast and adding text. I wanted it to have be x-Ray like, to evoke a feeling of scientific observation.
OSJ Wells Fine Art 