 You've got somebody who is being photographed by this mechanical process which shows them in Different positions of their head their face their body or whatever it is and therefore in a sense shape-shifting to some degree And they're not always the same person. They don't always have the same Ideas values attitudes or whatever it feelings or whatever it is these round little spools Piece of paper around it glued around it We take that off put that back in Run the film under that first roller there. That's the thing that senses whether it's the filming or not Turn it around just to say so we can On that through to the middle real shut the back makes a click And then wind on until you feel a good click again, and there we are That's the first frame put it back on the tripod There we are ready to go we might try a Multiple exposure portrait Paul much as we assume Deakin would have done it My assumption would be that Deakin was actually using a tripod for this You're then going to get some idea of what's going to happen by the movement of the of the head or the body or whatever It is the subject There are very few with blurs in the portrait the only one I felt that perhaps that wasn't the case It looks like the camera is probably being held steady and he's taken two images handheld What I'm going to do is take a first exposure and Then a second and then a third so what we need to do is to take our meter reading again If we were Deakin we take our meter reading and we see yeah, it doesn't change Again, it's about an eighth of a second at five point six now Then you have to think about what the film is doing Okay, so when you are taking the exposure the first of the three exposures We're going to do a three-part multiple exposure. You need to break down the exposures into their parts They'll make one full exposure. You've then got to take basically a creative decision Do I want to have the multiple exposure with a one dominant image? And then a couple of lighter ones which almost give it like a semi-ghost like effect Or do I want all three to be more or less at the same level we've meted it an eighth of a second But that would be for a single image So if we did three exposures and a 30 of the second Broadly speaking, we're going to end up with one exposure at an eighth of a second effectively an eighth of a second Yeah I'm going to set that to five point six give myself a little bit of depth of field and To an eighth of a second. No, it's possible getting a little bit of movement, but actually that's not too much of a worry Deakin working in the daylight studio Which I think he probably was judging by a lot of the photographs that it made at this store He's got quite a lot of light coming down on the subject He's got reflectors as well to reflect in the sorts of effects he was doing He probably would also have probably slightly overdeveloped the film in other words The film has a speed a certain sensitivity to light and he's assuming that has about half the sensitivity That is stated on the box The reason for that is that you get more detail then into the negative and then when you print it You can get what people call a punchier negative, which is more contrasting or sort of sharper look to it He's going to probably ask the Subject to look into the lower of the two lenses on the Ronny flex That's the taking lens. The other one is the focusing lens. So the first one, right now what we need to do is to push the little serrated wheel at the bottom of the Crank handle here just round like that and it smooths very easily goes right away round the film doesn't wind on It stays exactly where it is in the camera and it cocks the shutter for another exposure So if you can move back to where you were before but now look over here Now we're going to do exactly the same thing again Now which way did you look last time that way so you need to look the other way that's it Okay, so that's our three-part multiple exposure up close up close up close So the process is actually quite long-winded that implies certain things actually I think about what Deakin is doing He's working with people essentially that he either knows quite well and a patient are willing to put up with this People also that are interested in the idea of messing around with the image of playing games and seeing what chance brings in And this sort of thing as well. It's not something the Subject would be unaware of they will be aware that you're doing something different to the other shots the regular shots Because you would move in a different way and would be paying attention to the mechanics of the camera in a different way I think it's a very good point and one I hadn't really thought about quite so much before But what it involves as well is that sort of complicity between the subject and the photographer Which in a strange sort of way isn't something that you get from Deakin's portraits Deakin's portraits tend to be sort of hard controlled almost forensic sort of photographs of people and you can see at the time There they were not pretty pictures. They're not portraits designed to flatter flatter exactly or impress the subject But what he's doing here with this is he's obviously playing with people that he knows he can play with and who want to play with him It may be that there's some Thing relevant there in the choice of subjects. I mean none of the vote portrait as far as I know Double triple exposures multiple exposures when he saw it's it's the innocence would be inverted commas You might say the private portraits There's only certain people that he felt that he could do this with or Possibly if we take the bacon angle into account here the bacon would have encouraged him to do it So wanted him to do this because he knew that Deakin could get this effect that bacon was also looking at Deakin actually is very good at these sorts of things and Knows how to make the image look rather sort of mysterious What I also want to do is one with possibly a dominant exposure So you get a slight ghosting effect just clear that Deakin is doing that. It's not obvious to me That he's always Intending that effect. I mean there is an element of you know the surrealist idea of chance I think entering in here, but there's also not impossible that there's a mistake. Oh, I forgot to change the shutter speed setting or something like that So I do two we're gonna do two profiles profiles now I'm gonna have to go again because I've made the classic mistake Which is a very easy thing to do Because you know if you're using a Ronnie Flix all the time it becomes a second nature Roll Yes, you have to make yourself not exactly. It's a very carefully calibrated process Right now Exposure So we want to we want a sort of slight ghosting effect And we're building up exposure here at the same time each time we open the lens Doing a little bit more light in here. So the negative itself at each exposure is going to get Dennis up The other aspect of it which I think is quite interesting is that these sessions are actually quite long So if he's got five or six of these with his typically one her role though So the photo session would move at normal speed, but then it would be slowed up I suppose at whatever point you decided to do the double what he possibly did Was to play about with it at the end of the role or possibly at the beginning of the role Deakin doesn't strike me as a person who's interested in putting his sitter of ease So playing games isn't sort of what he's doing to get them into the mood. I don't think he's interested in Expression basically very very few of his subjects you meet anything close to a smile Ever and he's very much one of these people I think who wants to see the face as some sort of signifier of the character of the person and therefore Expression in a sense to Deakin is probably anathema There are very few portraits where the subject looks happy or amused or anything like that or even sad They sometimes look that they have sort of fed up with what's going on, but I think that's what he wanted Okay, so we're back to an eighth of a second Yeah, so That's it. That's great. That's perfect. That's great. That's absolutely great Okay So it's actually quite easy to do this as well. It's not difficult. It takes a bit of you have to think yeah to do it See one of the things I also have to do which is quite complicated is I have to remember What's in the top of that picture? Do you have a grid on that you find it? You have a grid on that you find out you could mark this out Now I think he would not want to do that in terms of what he knew about the ideas that are coming through for the 1930s about Photography and about chance and all of these sorts of things. He's not gonna be interested in doing that He wants those accidental effects to some degree He wants a little bit of control over them, but probably not too much What I want you to do is to lift your head No, don't don't know. No, it's okay. It's all right. Look look possibly just yeah relax a little bit Yeah, and There look straight ahead. I think our other images where Deakin took Photographing people in front of a mirror so this kind of positioning and playing with both the action of light and Mechanical process of the camera kind of seems to be something that you know, he did You're gonna sit there Something like that looking into Looking into the mirror I'll never see the one he's done. Let's see all the ones he's done. Yeah, it's a mirror on it on a yeah Yeah, I say yes her parting is that side so they seem to be two with that that side That's interesting Basically two sets of double exposures. One is done in the mirror Yeah, I've got to get you hang on. Yeah, you need to be just back here facing this facing the window Okay, you can come along Because we've got plenty of height Yeah, what I've got what I've got to do is Work out how I'm gonna do this Of course, we need a lot depth of field so at that point we need about three and a quarter feet and The other way we need Seven feet You need F 22 What's the hyper focal distance? Hyper focal. Yes, this is what we need. Is that something to do with the infinite? No, what it is is the position between three and a half feet and seven feet where three and a half feet and Seven feet are equally in focus I'm gonna do a double exposure the slight problem is I think you're actually slightly too high I'll sit down and you'll see It's easier if you look and you can see what the what the problem is Okay, mm-hmm. See there's a lot of extraneous information In that picture. He's used the sort of there's a much bigger mirror It's spinning up the whole of the wall. Yeah in his picture. I thought you could come forward to be I could come forward Yeah, I could be in that bit I don't think it's gonna make a huge amount of difference. No No, that's just because it's not a big we can do it for instance. No, we will we needs a big Let me go lower Okay, now what I'm doing is I've got it set up half a second, right? number one and very steady Okay, okay, that's great Right, that's that What I've kept Noticing is the amount of calculating. Yeah, it's not an easy process because you've got lots of variables taking into account here What is this thing about the fact that you're adding exposure to to the film? So you need to start with what's the exposure you you expect to get and then you've got this other complication which is about Well, do I give one of those exposures less time? So it's less Dense on the negative therefore Darker on the in the finished print You've got variables going in two directions And then there's the other thing about where am I putting the subject and then we've got this one We're trying the mirror where we've got the other problem is we're talking about a huge distance We've got to cover in terms of the lens and focusing on it now be much better on a smaller camera Because the depth of field is much greater on those than on this the longer the lens the less depth of field you've got So you've got all those variables going on as well What I like about them is that they are so mechanical It's a bore and a nuisance at certain times because if you run into film you run into film But you know the wonderful thing about film is you what you take on that camera Is a physical trace of the fact that you and I yes, and John we're in the same room together Yes Do I know always used to say about photography that it was about putting your foot in the door so Chance could get inside as it were the image. I think that possibly was what was in deacons mind as well