[Alt-photo] My Portraits Printed in Human Blood

[Francesco Fragomeni]

Hi all,

I don't think I've posted anything about this here so I thought some of you
might be interested to see. The use of blood as a medium in the arts seems
to have taken a bit of an upturn in the past 10 years for some reason so I
suppose this is my contribution to that movement. I have an ongoing project
in which I'm printing near life size portraits in the blood of the people I
photograph. Part of this is also an HIV advocacy project so the next series
will be photographs of people living with HIV and will be printed in each
respective sitter's HIV+ blood.

To answer the first question I always get, yes everything is done with all
safety precautions strictly adhered to and all elements of the work which
involve drawing blood is done under the supervision of medical
professionals.

This initially started as an experiment dealing with the photo-reactive
iron salts present in blood but once I realized the impact of certain
social commentary I could make with the material I moved to experimenting
with printing with the blood as a direct pigment. I'm now experimenting and
working with mechanical printing processes such as silk screen,
photogravure, and woodburytype variants. The blood receives a different
chemical treatment for each process which serves to stop coagulation,
neutralize compounds in the blood which could cause archival issues, and
modify the viscosity for ideal printing specific to the processes.

The project has been getting some attention here in NYC and we're now
looking for representation and figuring out where it'll show once the
project is complete.

The first series along with a bit of information can be seen at:
www.BloodPortrait.com


Enjoy,

Francesco Fragomeni
www.FrancescoFragomeni.com
www.BloodPortrait.com