Photographer Scott Alario's latest exhibition at Kristen Lorello Gallery features digitally hand-painted negative images, printed as unique dye sublimation prints and mounted within handmade ceramic frames. Each scene in this new series takes place in warm weather in the outdoors. Alario's collaborators, Marguerite, Elska, Marco, and their dog Rupee, appear in cropped close-ups that draw the viewer's attention to the subjects' relationship with a nearby life form: a wildflower, painted turtle, or moth. Focusing on these relationships, Alario creates a sense of discovery in the viewer and a gentle feeling. At the same time, his incorporation of the photographic negative lends the images a ghostly aspect. With effects of multiple exposures, tight cropping, and color that appears to come to form and fade, the depictions appear both intimate and ephemeral.
In previous color photographs, Alario has used color separation, macro lenses, and multiple exposures to capture the wonder, energy, and movement of his young children. As photography critic Loring Knoblauch has noted, Alario produces color images in this way 'to intentionally undermine the static nature of a single image, introducing both chance occurrences and time slippage into his storytelling.' Continuing to explore these themes, here the artist uses a multi-step process that relates digital color photography to analog photography, by drawing a connection to the traditional black and white negative. He photographs each scene in full color with a digital camera, digitally converts the images to negatives, and then hand paints the resulting images on a tablet. As Alario explains,
“My process began with digital photographs that I converted to black and white inverted negative images. I was struck when I saw them this way. It reminded me of working with analog film and seeing negatives, full of potential. Negative images can also be read as unsettling on their own: temporary and a reminder of impermanence as it relates to the act of photographing a loved one. To rub against this, I added layers of color. Using a tablet, I digitally painted on top of the negative, sourcing color from my original photograph as well as from my imagination. The process is similar to the colorization of a black and white movie. By hand coloring, I wanted to subvert the negative. I like the direct reference to Victorian hand-colored images, though I’m using contemporary technology and my own color palette. The pictures are taken outdoors and are of play in and with the natural world, while the way in which the artworks are constructed and finished is quite the opposite: me alone in a digital realm.”
