Ross O'Donahue

What is your senior thesis?

I guess the best that I can describe it right now is a study of color and the way we perceive and comprehend different chroma. I want to strip color down to pigment and shading, by using the gum dichromate process, to look at color in it's purest form and hopefully dissect what each color means to us.

What motivated you to start this project? What inspires your creative process?

A few things contributed... I've always been a hands on sort of person, so working in the alternative lab suits me best. The gum dichromate process allows me to actually mix the pigment by hand with watercolor, so I have control over the final color. This is what drove me to attempt the process and would allow me to use color in its simplest form: pigment.

Do you work in film or digital? Please describe any technique or process relevant to your project.

Both are important to me. I usually shoot in film and then scan to the computer world. Then, I print on transparency film to bring to the alternative lab.

The gum dichromate process uses gum arabic, a pigment (water color) and most commonly potassium dichromate, although sodium and ammonium dichromate also work. I then coat the watercolor paper, wait til it is dry, and print. It is a fairly simple process, but I need a lot of patience and a good negative to get a solid print.

Is this a new project or a continuation of previous work?

It's a continuance of my love of alternate processes.

How has your work developed or changed over time?

I have found my self shooting far more simply. I'm looking at form and color more, which may be a reaction to the complex images I've been noticing in contemporary works. Maybe I'm just not that complicated; I don't know.

What artists/ or works of art have inspired or influenced you?

I think all art has the power to inspire us. Even if I don't care for work very much, I can take things I don't like from it as inspiration too. But artists I do care for are Harry Callahan, Salvador Dali, M. C. Escher, and directors Spike Jonze and Wes Anderson.

What kind of response do you hope to get from your viewers? Is there a certain experience you want people to take away from your photographs?

I'd like to make people think about color a little more in their life and how a little color can change your attitude.

What is the ideal setting to view your work? Do you picture your photographs in a book? In a gallery?

I think the gallery setting would hold my prints a little better. There is something to be said for being able to get up close to an alternative process and see the hand of the artist in the work.

Do you have any ideas or plans for future work?

Just to keep on making it.

What do you see yourself doing after graduation?

Making photos, screen prints, stencils, a little graphic design and skateboarding. Kinda like what I do now, except with a degree.