What is The Lucerne Project?

I make art based on personal narrative, using 'damaged photos'. I use my own photos, or found photos, and enlarge them on a photocopier until the image starts to break down, thus 'damaging' them further. Interesting details and shapes emerge from this process. I then print the images using a process called paper-litho transfer. I combine the prints into artist's books, and these form the basis for work in other media. All the time, I am looking for combinations of image and text that suggest a personal narrative.



Facebook 1, accordion fold book, 16 damaged photo prints+text

Often the personal narrative is my own, based on memories of growing up in a mining town in the north of England. Sometimes I use the personal narratives of other people. The Lucerne Project is an extension of this. The project starts from the fact that Chicago, USA, where I now live, and Lucerne, Switzerland, are twin cities. I asked myself the question: how would I make a personal narrative about people I've never met, in a city I've never been to?

As I explore answers to this question, I will post the results on this blog. My preliminary method is to take publicly-available photos of Lucerne, or taken in Lucerne, print them using the 'damaged photo' method outlined above, and write narratives suggested by the resulting prints.