5+1: Anastasia Varlamova's Interdimensional Film Soup

Moscow-based Lomographer and experimenter Anastasia Varlamova a.k.a. alcesalces has a knack for painting surreal compositions with her camera. Often subjecting her stock of films to unorthodox and extraordinary processes, she is no stranger to risks and happy accidents. Such is this curious case of Anastasia's film soup – which visibly sliced through the portal of time and opened up galactic wormholes into the unknown. We are just as amazed!

Once I came across a batch of expired motion picture film, shot the test roll, and immediately fell in love with it, I realized it is not the best strategy for a stable mental life. I do not recommend falling in love with a discontinued film stock (haha!) So I bought a ton of these rolls and felt safe for a second. Then an absolutely separate event had happened – one evening, I decided to try a new craft beer, had a sip of it, and immediately hated it. And what does a polite Lomographer do with an alcoholic beverage they don’t like? Offer it to a roll of film. Preferably to a film stock one has in abundance, cause you don’t want to waste a unique roll of yet another discontinued film stock.

Materials & Process

I used the following:

• beer
• hibiscus tea
• efferverscent vitamin C tablet
• a bag of rice

The said hated beer had a sour taste and a bright red tint. So I decided to make it even redder and sourer. I added some scalded hibiscus tea and an effervescent vitamin C tablet and left it overnight. Then rinsed in running water, then, being very impatient, I unrolled everything in a dark bathroom and tried to dry it up with a blow dryer. Then I put the rolls into a bag of rice and forgot about them until I felt like shooting a soaked film (which is a very specific desire). I soaked two rolls of Fuji Eterna 500t and one of Fuji Eterna Vivid 500t. The results I will show are from the latter.

Ravishing Results

When I first saw the scans I was devastated. I’ve never soaked a motion picture film so I didn’t quite know what to expect, but definitely not this vast rags of emulsion torn off of the most crucial parts of the image like this film soup somehow knew where the eyes are and specifically torn them away. Because if the model has eyes, that’s not artsy — everyone knows this, apparently. But in a couple of days and a couple of discussions with my friends I started to see that this exact «ripped off» marks made these portraits and cityscapes so emotional and eye-catching.

There are hardly any stains or blotches on the pictures, so I guess the dominant "ripped off" effect of this film soup is caused by the antihalation layer adhering to the overlapping color-sensitive layers of the next coil of film. And that’s somehow symbolic that the emulsion is stripped away, like in real-life human striptease, layer by layer. Somewhere (if it went all the way) you can see the nude triacetate base. Also if there were parallel universes, I guess that’s the way to capture them and bring them to the CIA.

Please do try this experiment at home. Be sure to get THE MOST disgusting beer you can get your hands on, otherwise, it won’t work. If you don’t achieve this result, you know you’ve not found the nastiest beer, keep searching, and good luck ;)

I’m gonna try and shoot the rest two of these rolls this Summer, cause this grunge effect looks more appealing on a soft, warm, dreamy photo. I’m starting to wake up from a creative winter slumber along with nature and very much eager to shoot some very expired film specimens on bright days. Have you seen this grain on a cross-processed thirty-year-old Owochrom? One grain for the right part of the image and one for the left, that’s all you need to make a happy Lomographer even happier!

Follow Anastasia on her Instagram and LomoHome for more of her work!

written by cielsan on 2021-05-06 #tutorials #tipster #film-soup #alcesalces