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44 photos

One thing is certain, the world is not always what it appears to be

We encounter detours, stumble over barriers. We constantly need to keep our eyes wide open and question our pre-conceived ideas: put ourselves in the shoes of “the other” in an attempt to make sense of the world.

A sky may be orange, a street crimson, a purple mist envelopes us, this can seem normal but then not quite normal. Almost mundane photographs from everyday life appear surreal yet real.

With Bizarro World Turnnidge injects a new vibrancy and energy into her works. The stunning results, a fusion between photography and painting betray her passion for life, her obsession for crossing borders and building bridges between peoples.

All photos were originally taken in B&W between 1984 and 2002, Turnnidge subsequently prints them on fibre -based paper and hand-tints them using her stock of rare Chinese photographic inks. When she first bought these inks in Canton back in the 1980’s, it was still commonplace for people to have their portraits tinted by studio photographers using this very same method, colour photography was simply neither affordable nor accessible. Turnnidge had her eureka moment in 1989 after visiting Raj Bros Photo Studio in Goa, there she met one of the brothers who had been spending 3 weeks hand-tinted each & every sari on a wedding photo. Tinting became a way of life in the 1990’s when Brenda Turnnidge, based in Paris, sought a way to escape the griseous, toneless shades of northern Europe.

Brenda Turnnidge’s highly original hand-tinted photographs have been the subject of many solo exhibitions

The title "Bizarro World" was inspired by David Byrne's book of photographs, "Strange Ritual".


Categories & Keywords
Category:Artistic
Subcategory:Pop Culture
Subcategory Detail:
Keywords:China, Cuba, Egypt, Hand-tinted photographs, Hong Kong, India, Laos, Lebanon, Macau, Mexico, New York, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Sicily, Thailand, Vietnam