This image is actually one half of a pair. The other image, which I’ll be posting soon, was a runner-up in the Benson and Hedges Gold Awards. It won me a place in their touring exhibition and garnered some really great publicity during my formative years as a photographer.

Inspired by a series of images I’d seen exploring the human form, I used a Sinar F1 large format camera with a Polaroid back to capture the original frame. I then loosely manipulated that Polaroid using bleach toner, before re-photographing the resulting composite onto a 5×4 Ilford FP4 negative. From there, it was printed again, and I applied further bleaching during the final printing stage to achieve this gritty, textured result.

I hasten to add that I stopped after completing just the hands and feet! It was an incredibly lengthy, labour-intensive darkroom process to get that perfectly rustic look, and frankly, I had other images I wanted to shoot.

I know this heavily manipulated style isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but they were incredibly popular at the time and actually accounted for some of my very first proper print sales. Let me know what you think… csj

• taken|19 april, 2000
• camera|Sinar F1
• lens|150mm
• focal length|150mm
• aperture|n/a
• shutter speed|n/as
• shooting mode|handheld
• exposure bias|0 ev
• metering mode|n/a
• iso|50
• flash fired|no
• image quality|scan
• raw converter|Photoshop CS2
• cropped|yes
• location|Plymouth, United Kingdom