Things have been looking really blue to me. No, I’m not feeling blue... I’ve been seeing things in blue. That’s because I’ve been making cyanotype prints of some of my photographs.
Maybe as a kid you made sunprints. You know the blue paper you put leaves and coins and stuff on, put in the sunshine and then dunk it in water? And when you are done wherever something was blocking the sun from reaching the paper became white. I’m basically doing the same thing but putting a big
photographic negative on the paper that I coated in blue cyanotype chemicals.
The end result is like a black and white picture but in blue and white. Like really really blue. Cyan blue. The blue of blueprints.
I find the cyanotypes lovely. But what is striking me the most is how quickly I stop noticing how blue the images are. Instead I see the picture I took of the misty bay near Petoskey or the gate on Belle Isle. The blue on blue world of the images quickly starts to look perfectly normal to me.
It’s sort of like when I would wear yellow sunglasses for cross country skiing. At first when I’d put them on everything would be so, so yellow. But then spruce trees would start to look green again and snow started to look white again. But hours later when I’d take them off, my normal glasses made everything look kinda blue for a bit. Until I normalized that as well. It’s a little disconcerting how quickly we can normalize things. Sure it can be helpful. Like how we get used to the cold water when we swim or a new time zone when we travel. But other times it is more disturbing.
These days I can’t get anywhere now without a map app showing me the way. Even though for years I hopped in the car and got to interviews in unfamiliar places on a daily basis with only some vague directions scribbled on a scrap of paper. And I can’t imagine how I used to fly overseas for a vacation without a cell phone or even a hotel reservation. Somehow I figured it out. Life without a smart phone was normal. Now it is anything but.
We humans have a way of adjusting to profound change. It’s just the new normal we say. And we forget what used to be quote-unquote normal.
Even rose colored glasses stop looking rose. And my blue cyanotypes stop looking so blue to me.
It's a good reminder - for better and often for worse - of how easily we accept what used to seem unimaginable.
