BXPosure workshop turns film photos into colorful 'film soup' art

BXPosure hosted a film "soup" workshop in the Bronx that invited participants to take photographs and alter the negatives with liquids, herbs, soaps and other materials to create abstract, colorful images, a presenter said.

The presenter, a Bronx artist leading the session, said the project drew on the idea of photosynthesis as inspiration and aimed to get people "outside just have fun" while experimenting with analog photography. "It was really inspired by the process of photosynthesis, um, which is just converting light into energy," the presenter said. The artist added that the workshop ties into a show they currently have on view at BXPosure and said the event was meant to foster community-building.

Participants praised the workshop's affordability. "The sliding scale was like 0 to $25," one resident said, adding that the fee included "film development, film materials" that she estimated could otherwise exceed about $40. The resident said the low cost and local focus drew her because she wanted to document the beauty of her own neighborhood and re-learn film processing techniques she had not had access to growing up.

Organizers and participants described the workshop as accessible and community-oriented rather than a commercial class; the hands-on process produced unique, individualized photo artifacts that attendees took home. Reporting for Bronx Net, Nova.