Blood Portraits
The Blood Portrait project is from my ongoing work exploring ‘derivatives’ or ‘derivative printmaking’. The blood portraits explore the photographic use of human blood and material derivatives of human blood; primarily hemoglobin, iron and copper salts, and natural pigments. The work examines the intersections of photography and the concept of relic, and the biological form as both subject and medium.
The first iteration of this work (2011) as seen here, focuses on halftone and continuous tone photographic prints using a combination of silk screen mechanical printing and dichromate-based chemical printing. This work has been acknowledged as likely the first of it’s kind to successfully use human blood in the creation of photographic portraits made through photo-chemical and photo-mechanical means. These portraits are printed in the blood of each person pictured. These are not merely pictures of people, they are in essence a lasting and tangible part of the people themselves.