After-image
January 11, 2019 2:44 PM   Subscribe

Emily Wick (seen previously on MeFi) is on a quest to encourage new ways of seeing what's hidden in plain sight. In 2010, she created a regulation-size, inverse-color American flag (turquoise, black, and yellow) at an event in her Oakland art space, Smokey's Tangle. The flag makes use of an optical illusion: after staring at the inverted-color flag for several minutes, looking at a blank white surface creates an "after-image" with the flag's proper colors. After the 2017 US presidential inauguration, she took the flag to the Oakland Women's March. From there, she was encouraged to photograph the flag in the context of her daily surroundings. The result is her 2017 project Inverse Universe.
posted by duffell (9 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
(Fun fact: Wick's colleague Brian Brooks, with whom she runs Smokey's Tangle, is the guy who created that Morrissey Gets a Job coloring book.)
posted by duffell at 3:07 PM on January 11, 2019


I like this a lot, thanks for posting!
posted by Fig at 3:23 PM on January 11, 2019 [2 favorites]


I like negative-color photos just for their usual uncanniness, but the saturated red-white-and-blue really made this great.
posted by Guy Smiley at 4:17 PM on January 11, 2019


In the Inverse Universe America, you-know-who is President and you-know-who-else isn't.
posted by glonous keming at 4:35 PM on January 11, 2019


In the years that followed, I discovered I hadn’t been the first to artistically represent the inverted American flag–Jasper Johns created the lithograph “Flag (Moratorium)” at the height of the Vietnam war.

I was going to say... I think Jasper Johns beat you to it. But I really like the negative photography--I had always thought about the retina effect from the Johns flag but never considered the negative photography.
posted by Kafkaesque at 5:05 PM on January 11, 2019 [1 favorite]


I did a fourth-grade science fair project on afterimages. Fourth-grade me thinks this is really cool! Modern me also likes it!
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 5:12 PM on January 11, 2019


That's just so brilliant that I almost hate it. Damn.
posted by octothorpe at 7:43 PM on January 11, 2019


This is cool!
posted by Going To Maine at 9:26 AM on January 12, 2019


I love the turquoise and black - so satisfying and pretty.
posted by Squeak Attack at 10:19 AM on January 12, 2019


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