OUR COVER PHOTOGRAPH this month is from a rollfilm transparency by Trevor Britton of Newton Hall, Durham, England. Britton's set of pictures had a strong common treatment and in some ways were reminiscent of Walter Marynowicz's pioneering colour (1960s and early 70s), but a little more obscure.
Trevor Britton produces pictures as a creative personal interest - he's a driving instructor - and has never pushed them forward for publication or exhibition. Last year he decided to try entering one in the annual Portugese Contemporary Art Exhibition and ended up with a medal. In the past, he has produced prints for sale through art galleries, but now produces rollfilm dupes from 35mm slide sandwiches. The coloured elements are made using art paper backgrounds, photographed and bound up with portraits. The combination is then copied on to 6 x 4.5 using a Mamiya C220 with 180mm lens - exploiting its bellows close-up facility.
Trevor says he came across Photon almost by accident - his only other photo magazine of choice was Zoom - and thought that our liking for total changes of style and variety of content might give his work a chance of use. He finds the images in most photographic magazines repetitive. He hasn't, so far, tried marketing this work through stock agencies.
The cover, lower left and upper right images were reproduced using Linotype Hell�s new Saphir desktop scanner and Linocolor 4.0 software (the other two on our regular Nikon ScanTouch). We will be reporting on the Saphir and Linocolor next month.