the scannography blog

Jaime Ruas, Mark Brown, Hercilia Lopes, Jordan Prestrot and myself added new images on our site. Take a look at them if you please. Some nice scanns amongst them. Don't hesitate, if you already have your page on the scannography site, to send me new works if you want to update that page.

A scannography contest on a Gardening site. A bit late to present this but I wasn't aware of it earlier. Anyway, it's nice to see that scannography becomes used by everyone. This contest is a good example of that.

"Gardening Gone Wild" is a blog about gardens (did I figure that out by myself ?). They organize photo contests regularly. October theme was scannography.

The contest results are presented here, and you will see it's classical flower scanns but some very nice pictures amongst them.

Let's hope other scanography contests wil take place everywhere…

Jens Standke came to our site last year, working with lights and movements.

He gave me some news. This is not "scannography" as we define it anymore but it stays in connection with scanners so I thought I give you the info as I find he today's work really interesting.

Jens worked with a scanner to capture his own movemet that he then transformed in sculpture : "The experience is: By moving our body we are taking more space and another time as normally ascribed.". So movement and scanner stay in his body of work and it's good to see a concrete result of this thinking and working.

If you want to see more photos click here : "Photos"

You can also check the video of his "making-of" here: "Video"

PhotoshopUser is THE Photoshop "HowTo" magazine. The september 2010 issue contains 8 pages about scannography.


I'm very glad that Linda Zacks, Clare Nicholas and myself were invited to talk about our way of using a scanner. Here is how this featured pages are presented : "How many of you out there have a scanner sitting on your desk? (That’s exactly what we thought.) So when’s the last time you used that scanner? Well, if you’re anything like the following three artists, then you answered, “I’m using it right now.’’ A lot of people will tell you that scanners are for digitizing photographs and slides, but that’s only partof the story. Scanners have the capability to capture just about everything around you — one man’s trash could be that one element that’s missing from your next assignment. Throw in some paint, sandpaper, crayons, paper and other art supplies, and you’ll be creating unique and awe-inspiring illustrations and designs in no time."
Clare Nicholas talks more of flat objects that can be used in a recomposed image, Linda Zacks scanns about everything and reuses these elements in her creations. I explain how I compose my own images. PhotoshopUser is a great magazine that gives lots of tips and tricks, it is only available for members of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP).
If you go to the website of the NAPP, you can even ask for a free issue…

Here is the message I received from Chad :

''I'm Included in a group show at a great photo gallery out in LA , opening next Thursday the 9th at 6pm. Sadly I will be unable to attend due to a very bad case of poverty. But please attend and give me some buzzy-ness, bring friends or even enemies. Its new work ( 3 large pieces and 15 portfolio prints to browse) Ive been doing with "scanography" and old paper documents. Best Chad''

Stephen Cohen Gallery 7358 Beverly Boulevard • Los Angeles CA 90036

Gallery hours are: Tuesday - Saturday 11:00 am - 6:00 pm 323.937.5525 phone

Here are two of the pieces he exposes. I also join the transation of the Emily Dickinson letter, Chad sent me. Letter to Benjerman Kimball

"To take the hand of my friend's friend, even apparitionally, is a hallowed pleasure. I think you told me you weree his kinsman. I was only his friend-and yet cannot yet believe the "his part in all the pomp that fills the circut of the Southern Hills, is that his grave is green". His last words on his last note were" a caller comes". I infer it to be Eternity, as he never returned.

Yourtaask must be a fervent one- often one of pain.

end of page one

page 2

Oh Death, where is thy Chancellor? On my way to my sleep, last night, I paused at the Portrait. Had I not loved it, I had feared it, the face had such ascension.

Are even as thyself, For what are stars but asterisks, To point a human life?

Thank you for the nobleness, and for the earnest note- but all are friends, upon a spar.

Gratefully ,E. Dickenson

Diane Kaye made me discover this nice, well rythmed and funny clip. Melting all kind of scannographic images. You can watch it here Created by Damon Stea of Mindfruit Studios made Memoirs of a Scanner with Cassandra Chowdhury and Zack DeZon.“The shoot probably took around six hours of pure, unadulterated face-to-the-scanner animating, followed by pickup shots of all the papers and transitions,” Stea said. “Editing was pretty quick as well — it was a remarkably simple process to actually complete.”

I hope they will produce others…

Taking pictures of the outside world with a simple scanner can seem to be a strange idea. Thomas W McDonnell got from the idea to its realisation. With incredible results

So here we are in face of the first landscapes taken directly with a scanner. I except here Jeff Mihalyo's work, who has been the only one, on our site, realizing pictures with a real depth of field.
Thomas has taken out his scanner to capture real life, moving it around while it processes, putting it on his car while driving, scanning conversations with people. The result is really amazing, opening once more new fields for scannography.

Once again I hope you will all see his page. His work is really impressive. There is not much more to add, the pictures speak for themselves. From a personal point of view, I just want to say that I find lot of feelings in these images, a kind of sense of story-telling, a humanity that is often missing in scannographers works.
His large images have obliged me to create a special second page for him. A feature we can, maybe replace in the future. The images on the blog are less impressive so please click to see his larger works and you can also visit his Flick'r gallery.



And leave comments please (it takes a few seconds to write down just a few words : do it !!! It's a pleasure for me and for the artists concerned…)

It seems scannography doesn't make it to bigger medias.
And if it does it is considered as strange photographic technic. I have this feeling that this is essentially due to what we are. I mean we mostly (the big part of us scannographers) are working at home, taking pictures of little things from our near environment. We don't take pictures from things that concern the others. So why should they be interested ? Photography is different, you show things to people that concerns them, so they look at a kind of mirror of themselves.
We only propose a look at what WE are.
In a certain way scannography is much more an artistic way of working then photography is…

So, if we want our works to be seen, we have, I think, to stick together, try to push things together… Give us your feelings about this, write some comments, share ideas… Long live scannography!

A young french girl, student in Visual Arts and History of Art in Angers is using a scanner to create images and projects of her own. Elisabeth produces two types of scannographies. You can now see her images on our main site, but also on this page.

The first are portraits in black and white where she tries to put emotions and to capture a kind of innerworld of the subject… The lights, contrasts and composition are superb in these images and she succeeds by transmitting emotions and characteres of the persons she scanns…



The second type of scannographies are abstracts. Elisabeth paints abstract color compositions, then scanns them while moving them on the scanner screen-plate. She obtains images with lots of movements and waves. She uses them in projections while a dancer follows his inspiration guided by these scannnographic movements… A very interesting experiment.

I hope you will like this new artist. Don't hesitate to give her some feedback by commenting these images.

Yes I know, flowers, flowers, when it comes to scannography it always comes to flowers.

But Roberta Bailey (she has her own website here), brings the subject to a new level. At least to my eyes. She plays with colors, transparencies, and lights without crashing the simplicity of the elements she presents. Her creations are just perfect. The essence of her body of work seems to be beauty, something that gets more and more lost in Contemporary Art. That's maybe why we are not looked at as artists, but as some bunch of amateurs playing with scanners !!!
Go and see these images (on scannography.org) , I think you'll be amazed too (especially if you like flowers as much as Modern Art, which I personnaly do, being open minded is important these times).
I hope she will touch a large public and so help scannography get it's way forward.