Bill SullivanSELF PORTRAITS WITH MIRRORS (WITH PRINT)

Bill Sullivan’s book "Self Portraits With Mirrors” was created using found and constructed self-portraits of people with early digital camera phones and mirrors. Using various types of re-photography and image layering, Sullivan reimagines a changing progression of images and their surfaces beginning with a selection of images created from the LCD screen matrix of one of the most widely used original cameraphones - the Motorola V220 from 2003. As the book progresses the surface density of the images increases as the additional grids of the various LCD screens that Sullivan employed in their making begin to shift and overlap creating moire and other effects. In this process he weaves new types of visual surface texture for the eye reminiscent of canvas, etchings and different kinds of woven surfaces. Sullivan with his process also in many ways reperforms the act of creating a photograph of oneself. This series of images from 2007-2008, was created in a time before “selfies” became ubiquitous, and was part of a broader investigation of various types of image surface in which Sullivan looked at different ways that the eye sees and imagines the surface texture of things. Working with photos of LCD screens as well as different kinds of image noise, Sullivan built up the surfaces of his images looking to create dynamic fields of texture which could assume various iconic shapes and forms - such as tennis courts, volleyball players, lightbulbs, nudes and different types of landscapes.