This week, I retrieved my color film from the photo developer in Portland. I have a total of 3 rolls with 24 pictures each. I am scanning the film in the Digital Media Lab in Edwards and creating a contact sheet with all the photos so I can select the photos. I am selecting a total of 4 photographs and I am going through each on Photoshop to clear any dust particles that come up from scanning. After I edit each photograph, I am printing each of them digitally on an inkjet printer. I am also going to print 3 photographs that I took on my phone which are not as high quality but can also work for the project.
All the photographs I’m currently working on were taken were from a weekly drag show, Double Stubble, in a Wynwood bar called Gramps. This show is the epitome of the the burgeoning queer nightlife in Wynwood and other gentrified neighborhoods in Miami. It is the only weekly and regularly scheduled drag show in Miami (aside from Sunday brunch drag shows – which are more commercialized and targeted at straight audiences). The show features many gender non-conforming drag artists (that is to say that out of drag, they identify as transgender or gender non-conforming). It draws in crowds of queer (gender and sexual) people of color.
Aside from the photographs, I’m also purchasing matte boards to mount the photographs unto. I will be window matting the 8x10in photographs only. So I will be making approximately 7 window mattes. Window mattes are one’s where you create a backboard of sorts where the photograph rests and then creating a window out a second matter to place on top of the first – creating a flushed effect.
I am still looking for an exhibition space. But I have contacted Amber Orosco about showing in Ladd’s Yellow Room and should hear by the end of this week. I have also contacted the art history department about showing in the Kresge Gallery in the VAC.