Holiday Hotels

Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn

In the analog days people hardly took pictures 'just for the fun of it'. Not many people owned a camera, let alone used colour film, therefore most of my baby pictures are in black & white. Colour prints were more expensive to develope, so untill the late 70's and early 80's B&W film was used often still.

Colour film was only used for special occasions like a wedding, graduation or maybe a holiday. If you couldn't afford a colour film you bought postcards. After World War II with more money and free time then ever, the average Americans went on a roadtrip. Hotel, Motel, Holiday Inn, the United States were explored by car. In the 50's and 60's America blossomed. Not having to rebuild the country like torn down Europe, leisure was the new gold.

A decade ago I started collecting old B&W postcards to create Double Exposures fine art. I also bought some 'Kodak Chrome' postcards. I just loved the bright colours, but did not use them in my art yet. In my wedding photography I did cross process slide film to get those fab blues with bright yellows and reds, as Photoshop or a good quality digital DSLR weren't available yet. I will write about this special wedding photography later.

In 2014 I created my first series Holiday Hotel, available as fine art photography prints in all sizes. I come from a graphic design background, as in the late 80's when you could draw and paint you had to become a graphic design artist and you worked for an advertising agency. So I did my time at Sint Lucas (intermediate vocational education in graphic design) then ran to AKV|St.Joost - School of Fine Art and Design in 1992. St. Joost Academy is part of Avans University of Applied Sciences and offers undergraduate (BA) and graduate (MA) courses in fine art and design.

My love (and hate) for printed matter remained, I never really lost it. The first half of my carreer I was often called too artistic for commercial jobs and considered to be too commercial to be a 'true' non-commissioned artist. Whatever. I did what I did, and created a photography carreer still feeding the 4 mouths of my family. Graphic design knowledge wasn't all bad, I was able to design birth and wedding announcement cards in my own style using my photography, way before the cheap print websites emerged.

With Holiday Hotels I am experimenting with the Kodak Chrome postcards, as I am fascinated by the details of old fashion 4 colour print, also known as 'CMYK colour model'. Nowadays, just like photography, all is made digital even the print process. With full colour CMYK process a print is made in 4 layers, with Cyan (blue), Magenta (pink/red) and Yellow as main colours. To get the best density 'Key' (black) is added. CMY together create black as well, but this doesn't look fully black though.

I am now working on more Post Pop Art Prints of Holiday Hotels. The process of Seeing a special, new image in these old photos is wonderful way of learning how to See fresh without leaving your house. I remember being a student and taking macro photos of magazine images, only to use a small detail of the photo in art class. I used the 50 mm lens the wrong way, just held it to the camera and wow, super macro photos were born. I love these experiments and will never quit. Eyespiration!