Photography: Ursula Ferrara
URSULA FERRARA
Ursula Ferrara is an Italian photographer, painter and animation film director. She started with her father’s Leica at the age of 13 and studied analogic photograpy at the Florence Academy. With a PhD in film animation, she is passionate with ancient techniques, such as wet plate, and continues to experiment, with self-built cameras for ultra large format photography, including recently a camera van.
The Witch Pot
I started from the primordial chemistry, creating a primordial soup in which I put my photos after the shooting. I mixed the four elements: air, water, fire, earth, with nitrogenous slag, sea water and crude oil, leaving the pictures there for days, exposed to wind and rain, that creating unexpected effects on the surface of pictures that, being taken with an ultra large format analog camera 16x 20 inch and direct positive B&W Harman paper 16×20 inch., already contained unpredictable aspects. It was a journey from an intact photo to a corrupted one, a transition given by time and chemistry and luck, just as people and things are changed by anything that happen in their life, being it time, or chemistry, or luck.
Web site: cameravan.it
