Emma Powell can't sleep. And her insomnia has led her to create a Neil Gaiman-esque fantasy through her self-portraits. To create her unique blend of nightmare and fantasy, she uses a variety of poetically appropriate ingredients: cyanide, iron, tea and wine.
Cyanotype printing, invented by Sir John Herschel in 1842, involves placing a negative directly on paper coated with a UV-sensitive combination of cyanide and iron. As the image takes form, Powell rinses the print in water to stop the process. All this enables Powell, a lecturer in photography and Artist in Residence at Iowa State University, to create the deep, dream-like blues which she then warms with tannic acids.
In Search of Sleep incorporates the memories, both real and fictionalized, of her dreams and her father’s bedtime narratives. Her photographic methods are a blend of old and new — the cyanotype prints originate from digital negatives — and she’s inspired by photographers Sally Mann and Dan Estabrook, as they “integrate historic processes into their concepts.”
Taking a step back from the mobile part of photography. Let's look at Emma Powell's fantasy world that surrounds her bouts of insomnia. Using a cyanotype of printing that started in 1842, it's hard not to want to try and recreate such images.