Emulsion Lift Process
On the LeedsFilmPhoto walk, I met up with a girl named Heather Bontoft who studies Fine art at Leeds arts university. We were both shooting polaroid but she had developed her practice into a process called emulsion lifting. I later saw her work at an exhibition in Wharf Chambers and really liked the floaty, nostalgic style of the emulsion lifts so she agreed to show me how to do it. I modelled for some of her shots and she showed me how to do the process. I had previously tried to do it from coloured exposures whilst watching a youtube tutorial but found that the image tore and it wasn't effective.
The process involves taking the shot, cutting it's frames off and peeling apart the two boarders, one opaque and one transparent. the gelatine image should stick to one side which is then submerged in luke warm water. After a while, the image will start to come of this surface which can be removed from the tray of water. It's important to remove all the white emulsion paint from the image so that it doesn't show up in the final product. After this, the film is placed in cold water to make it a little stiffer and therefore, easier to manoeuvre on to the card (which should be around 300 gsm). This part is quite hard as the image is very temperamental and flows about freely in the water like a goldfish. Once one corner is on the card, the image is taken out and each side is slowly dipped in the water until the image is flat at which point we are able to work the image about as we please. I used 9 pieces of square symmetrical card and allowed the framing of each image to differ to give a more personal quality. each image has to be placed under a heavy surface to flatten it out because otherwise the paper bends wit the water.
This process isn't limited to just card and lifting one polaroid, it can be done with numerous pieces of film on one surface using various materials like wood and metal. I chose to stick with a singular isolated image on each card as it gave more of a sense of each memory leading to the overall picture of the park where I chose to shoot. The overall process looks quite like that scene in Scooby Doo where shaggy is 'lifting' the souls out of water - maybe emulsion lifting was the inspiration for this?
Below are some images of me doing an emulsion lift as well as the youtube video which I used to help me:
The process involves taking the shot, cutting it's frames off and peeling apart the two boarders, one opaque and one transparent. the gelatine image should stick to one side which is then submerged in luke warm water. After a while, the image will start to come of this surface which can be removed from the tray of water. It's important to remove all the white emulsion paint from the image so that it doesn't show up in the final product. After this, the film is placed in cold water to make it a little stiffer and therefore, easier to manoeuvre on to the card (which should be around 300 gsm). This part is quite hard as the image is very temperamental and flows about freely in the water like a goldfish. Once one corner is on the card, the image is taken out and each side is slowly dipped in the water until the image is flat at which point we are able to work the image about as we please. I used 9 pieces of square symmetrical card and allowed the framing of each image to differ to give a more personal quality. each image has to be placed under a heavy surface to flatten it out because otherwise the paper bends wit the water.
Below are some images of me doing an emulsion lift as well as the youtube video which I used to help me:
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