“Cake” A visual tribute to all things domestic
This is a self-portrait that I was inspired to create because of, believe it or not, the refrigerator. At the time, it was already a vintage behemoth that I had found at a yard sale – and with a lot of help and not a little bit of foolhardiness, we managed to lug it up the flight of 28 steps to the kitchen of my downtown studio/loft. The reason I was so enamored of the silly thing rests solely on its model name, which is too small to read in this image but can be seen to the left of my head…I took great delight in pointing it out to any and all visitors to my kitchen: behold, the “Masterpiece Foodarama.” There’s a party going on in there! And indeed we had many a party up there in that rarified space and I was more than pleased to capture it for posterity on film. It’s long gone now, having succumbed to the rust that never sleeps.
I used a tripod and a self-timer in order to pull this off…not to mention a saucy hostess apron and the strategically placed cake saving cover. This is one of my first experiments with digital enhancement – the film was black & white, and I had the negative scanned and then I played around with adding color and solarizing by manipulating the curves adjustment in Photoshop.
The funnest part was having it printed out poster-sized on backlit film; it still hangs in the very kitchen where it was created. Can you find the “arrow” that magically appeared from manipulating the image? Hint: Top of the head…. Wicked cool!
I’ve always loved (or, more properly, LUSTED after) this photo, Brenda!