In the San Francisco Bay Area, only recently removed from drought, few flowers bloom in mid-December.
The rolling hills in the East Bay are fresh and green and the last golden leaves have tumbled off the trees, but gardens here aren’t the riot of blooms I’d expect in the mild spring-like air. Here, the colors come from elsewhere— gardens are striped with succulents in soft mint green and deep emerald and lavender; trees spill over with Meyer lemons, the occasional palm tree pokes above the low-lying houses. Even the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park is predominantly green, with banana leaves and ferns only sporadically punctuated by a splash of vibrant orchid petals.
I wanted to shoot double exposure portraits during my time in California this winter, but my plans to layer faces with blooming gardens had to be tweaked. I embraced the topography of California lawns and their desert plants. But I also sought California colors in farmers markets, where piles of citrus and fresh vegetables proclaimed the place’s plenty. When I stumbled upon a patch of wildflowers, I pounced.
And then I switched to black-and-white, forgoing the colors all together.
I’ve been shooting doubles through my ongoing project with my friend Alison, but there is immense lack of control cooked into that project— I have no way of knowing what she shot, or where, or when, or what the light was like. I wanted to make some images where I could know both shots, and problem-solve with known variables. Plus, I was going to be with my sister, the greatest model and photo assistant ever.
There’s something weirdly appealing about double exposures. Maybe it’s the delight of unexpected juxtapositions, or maybe it’s because doubles draw direct attention to the tangible process of shooting film.
I shot the color images on a Pentax K1000, where I could control the focus and aperture and shutter speed. Generally, I shot everything underexposed by a click or two. For the portraits, I attempted to shoot against dark backgrounds, because I knew the flowers or fruits would show up in the shadier spaces of the first image.
The black-and-white roll was shot on two different cameras: the background textures were shot on the Pentax, but the portraits were shot on my Olympus Mju. This camera has automatic settings as well as a built-in flash, which brightened up the face of my subjects while leaving dark space around them so the texture layer could poke through. The camera also loads film from the opposite side as the Pentax, so the images are upside down. It took me quite a while to realize that’s what had happened.
I shot another background roll at the Los Angeles Flower Market that’s waiting for me to shoot double portraits over it, and I’m hoping to create many more independent double exposures separate from my Dreamspace project. Shooting film is always about letting go of control; these pictures are reminders that surrender can be oh-so-beautiful.
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