Colored Afterimages, 2025

Photomontage Series

This series was influenced by my interest in color theory and the way colors interact optically. Inspired by artist Liz Nielsen’s darkroom-based chemigram work, I sought to recreate a similar effect using digital photography and layering techniques. The process began with cut-out sheets of colored paper, each photographed under different lighting conditions on a black reflective surface. The images were then layered digitally, using transparency and blending techniques to simulate additive color mixing.

What interested me most was how the interaction of these colors happened not through physical blending but through the layering of light itself. Instead of mixing pigments, the compositions rely on transparency and overlap to generate new hues, similar to the way projected light combines in RGB color theory. This process transforms the flatness of the original materials into dynamic compositions where color appears to radiate and shift. Colored Afterimages is an exploration of color, material, and light. How physical elements can be reinterpreted digitally, and how our perception of color is shaped by layering, transparency, and contrast.

Overlapping translucent shapes in orange, pink, olive and red, with a long curved red form at the upper right, on a dark crinkled ground. — Colored Afterimages IArchival pigment print

A symmetrical stack of translucent diamond and triangle shapes in blue, magenta, yellow and green, topped by a red crescent, on a dark crinkled ground. — Colored Afterimages IIArchival pigment print

A cluster of overlapping shapes in crimson, green, cyan and yellow, with curling orange and pink forms at the upper left and a blue curling form at the right, on a dark ground. — Colored Afterimages IIIArchival pigment print

A rounded cluster of interlocking blobs in turquoise, green, pink and red, on a dark ground. — Colored Afterimages IVArchival pigment print

A wide triangle of overlapping pink, yellow, green and blue translucent panels, with a thin red squiggle rising from its peak. — Colored Afterimages VArchival pigment print

Overlapping translucent orange, green, magenta and blue wedge shapes spreading left and right from the center, on a dark ground. — Colored Afterimages VIArchival pigment print

Layered translucent shapes in blue, pink, peach and red, with frond-like outlines, a pale round form and a small stacked pebble-like shape at the right, on a dark ground. — Colored Afterimages VIIArchival pigment print