#david prifti

II Morte III 

David Prifti

David Prifti was a Photographer and teacher who sadly died in 2011 due to pancreatic cancer, he spent the last 15 years of his career experimenting with the earliest techniques of photography. He uses the traditional wet plate collision process along with liquid emulsion. The themes that ran throughout his work were; relationships, family, memories, rites of passage, age and death, his work was very personal. When it came to using wet plate and liquid emulsion photography, the materials he used were of those he collected such as broken slates, tin, ceramics, metal and wood. By using these objects he used them as an act of resurrection, to create something new - a reenactment of birth. As well as using old materials he would use liquid emulsion to put family portraits on top of the materials - paying homage to his ancestors. 

This image of Prifti’s is one where he used part of a wooden picket fence and used liquid emulsion to apply a family portrait to it. Within the image it love the tones and shades that come from placing an image on top of wood, along with the lines going down the image from the wooden panels. With regards to my own work, I could use pieces of driftwood to print images onto using liquid emulsion however the pieces I have collected so far are not suitable. 

Randolph, David Prifti (b.1960/61 - 2011)

Study of the head of a young mulatto woman full face (probably Fanny Eaton), Frederick Sandys (b.1829-1904)

Fanny Eaton, 1859, Simeon Solomon