“The Human Web”, March 16, 2001.

I created this image 25 years ago today for a class I was teaching at the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts (KIA) in Michigan. It was so popular that Jim Riegel, the head of the photography department, asked if he could exhibit it in the KIA faculty exhibit at the annual Kalamazoo Art Fair in Bronson Park in June. Jim was in charge of the faculty exhibit. When June 2 rolled around, he used it as the centerpiece work of art for the KIA exhibit. At the end of the day he told me it was the most talked about work of art in the faculty exhibit. All kinds of people stopped by to ask questions about it.

I am still asked questions about this image. Like, “How in the world did you stage and photograph this?”

This is a single exposure in the camera.

A black backdrop was at one end of the room and hung vertically from the backdrop stand to the floor and then extended forward on the floor, toward the camera. The model sat on the floor part of the black backdrop and faced the vertical part of the backdrop with her back toward the camera.

I was at the other end of the room with a slide projector and a camera on a tripod that was close to the slide projector. I had several analog slides ready to use. I chose a photo of a dew covered, spider web (which was backlit by the sun) and put it in a slide projector and projected the spider web on the model’s bare backside. The only light in the room was the projected photo of the spider web. Then I photographed the spider web on her backside.

The cool thing about the image is the way the projected image of the spider web wraps around the curves of her body.

A fellow artist who paints and is also experienced with a camera, asked me this question. “Did you KNOW it would work, or did you HOPE it would work?”

I was reasonably sure it would work, but I was shooting slide film so I didn’t know for sure it worked until I got the slides back. The camera meter had problems metering the spider web on her back so I had to bracket widely. Plus the shutter speeds were long and she had to hold her breath.

Sunrise over Little Bay de Noc, March 16, 2001.

I also tried a sunrise over Little Bay de Noc, Lake Michigan and a photo of some Bearberry in Denali National Park, Alaska and they were less complicated to meter. But the spider web is the most intriguing image.

Bearberry in Alaska, March 16, 2001.

“Where did you get the idea?”

The idea of projecting an image on a woman’s body was my own, but it was inspired by an image I saw by a photographer who projected a nature image on a pitcher. The nature image wrapped around the pitcher. I thought it would be cool to wrap a nature image around a human body.