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Ingrid Pollard defines her work as 'a social practice concerned with representation, history and landscape with reference to race, difference and the materiality of lens-based media', often questioning social constructs such as Britishness, or the notion of home and belonging. This photograph is from the series 'The Valentine Days', commissioned by Autograph in 2017. For the series, Pollard hand-tinted large prints of postcards of Jamaica from the 1890s. Hand-tinting is a method of delicately adding colour to black-and-white photographs by using brushes, fingers or cotton swabs. The process is used to heighten the realism of an image. The original photograph was taken by the nineteenth-century Scottish company Valentine & Sons who were hired to make promotional photographs of Jamaica and the people who lived there.
Through the series and the hand-tinting process, Pollard draws attention to the Black people in the frame, shifting the narrative from the original motive. The figures are presented as individuals with agency, placing them as part of human history. Pollard's interest in the layers of history is echoed in her accomplished use of nineteenth-century photographic techniques. She said of creating the work: 'Looking at the images for many hours as I tinted them by hand, I felt caught in the aura of the photographs and identified with the people in them.'
Title
The Valentine Days #1
Date
2017
Medium
giclée print on hand-tinted Hahnemuhle Bamboo Warmtone Fine Art paper
Measurements
H 76 x W 90 cm
Accession number
IP.TVD.01
Acquisition method
commissioned by Autograph
Work type
Photograph