Bill Armstrong writes: “In After: Dreaming in Color, I imagine the history of photography as if in a dream, making color interventions into iconic 19th-century photographs.
“My process is to transform appropriated images taken from the web and from books by injecting color, either digitally or by manually using color filters and a light table—or a combination of both. After: Dreaming in Color continues the arc of my investigation into layering found or appropriated images that I have been pursuing since the late 1970s, first with collages made from advertising posters and then with the blurred images of the Infinity series that I am known for.
“In my research I have found that the standard histories of photography often somewhat arbitrarily pass over the fact that color has been around since the beginning: in Anna Atkins’ cyanotypes; in opalescent daguerreotypes; in hand–colored and sepia-toned photographs. In response to this oversight, I have created my own dreamlike history of color photography. It is a reverie that continues my ongoing study of the contrast and harmony of colors, but this time with an eye toward wit, humor, and visual puns.”