Genur.art

35mm film photograph, Kodak Aerochrome false colour infrared, shot on a Nikon FE2 with a 50mm f/1.8 and a yellow filter, available light, bright overcast, foliage rendered magenta and crimson, surreal colour shift, fine grain, high contrast, scanned negative, high resolution. A 26-year-old woman poses at the edge of a summer hedgerow, standing with one hand pushed into her hair and the other on her hip, weight cocked, chin down, holding a slow half-smile straight into the lens. Deep brown skin with a warm sheen, a high natural afro with the tips dyed copper, very sharp cheekbones and a wide full mouth, tall and long-necked in a plain white cotton dress. Soft overcast light falls evenly on her, modelling her face gently with no hard shadow, and the white dress goes brilliant against everything behind it. Her skin renders honestly and only slightly warm — Aerochrome leaves people close to normal while destroying the world around them — with a shine at the temple, freckling across the nose, and a healed scar on one forearm. Then the colour arrives: every leaf, every blade of grass and the whole hedge behind her have turned deep magenta and crimson, the far treeline a wall of hot pink, the meadow beyond a wash of coral, while the sky stays a strange desaturated cyan-white and the path reads dull grey. Grain is fine and the contrast a step harder than life. Behind her the setting is completely ordinary: a wooden gate, a fence post with wire, a bramble arch, a farm track with puddles, a distant barn roof. Focus sits on her eyes with the hedge going soft at f/1.8. The frame is slightly loose with too much sky at the top. The mood is warm and matter-of-fact, an ordinary summer afternoon photographed in a spectrum nobody can see.