Orlando in Opulence -
Hector Maclean x Virginia Woolf
Fashion design and styling — Hector Maclean
Model — Charlotte Gadeke
Make-up and hair — Tracey Quinn
Photography — Tom Pinnegar
Above: Preparation for shooting, with a self-portrait test and conceptual development work. This test print is coloured with the tints shown here.
Below: The final glass negative, with concept drawing and a silver gelatine darkroom print. Final images were coloured in Photoshop to achieve better colour accuracy of Hector’s designs than is feesible with tinting dyes, but using an imitative manual process.
Above: The use of AI generated imagery printed onto the other 35mm strips serves the same symbolic purpose, but simultaneously questions the nature of photographic truth in our time. Generated file names are printed to ensure this AI origin is apparent.
A copy of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando - A Biography is available at the Internet Archive.
Above: A glass negative: this is a sheet of glass, coated by hand with a silver gelatine emulsion. ‘Dry plates’ were in general use between the 1870s until around the 1930s.
Below: The lightning storm of Sasha’s departure and betrayal was created by photographing the sparks of a Tesla coil. Orlando is lashing out at the rain, but the true storm is within him. The visible filmstrips are intended to make the metaphorical story elements visibly symbolic.
Above: The use of AI generated imagery printed onto the other 35mm strips serves the same symbolic purpose, but simultaneously questions the nature of photographic truth in our time. Generated file names are included in the frames to ensure this AI origin is apparent.
