During the Christmas break of 2015, I returned to the physical photograph. I was examining some of the photos in this collection when I noticed one image in particular.
This small print represents two women standing on a train platform, however, a lens flare, obscures one of the figure’s faces. I was struck by the way this visual erasure of the image resembled a “sanding away” of the image. It was at this moment that I questioned to myself, “what if I was to physically sand away the emulsion?” Taking a piece of 1500 grit Emery paper I began sanding other photographs from this collection. Immediately I was engaged – engaged in the sanding gesture but also excited at how the image was being transformed. By interacting with the information contained in the photograph I realized that I was rewriting the narrative of the image, a narrative that had been held in suspension for many years.
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| Unknown Passenger, Sanded Photographic Print, 2015 |
By intervening with the analogue
photograph, I can alter images - from my family archive that have been held in stasis for over
fifty years - disrupting both my interpretation of linear time
and my personal history.
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| Abduction, Sanded Photograph, 2015 |
Beyond
the physical satisfaction of sanding these prints, what does the action of
altering original analogue photographs imply? Many who visit my studio express their shock
that I would physically abrade the ‘original’ photograph. For me it is necessary, for it is this very
piece of paper that has the original light-energy stored within. There is a certain reverence placed on a photograph,
an assumption that the image is an immutable truth. It is important then, that I remove the
original silver nitrate that was activated by light many years ago. While I
agree that the photo can act as a trigger for memory, it is not memory in
physical form. Pierre Nora states, “Modern memory is first of all archival. It relies entirely on the specificity of the
trace, the materiality of the vestige, the concreteness of the recording, the
visibility of the image.” Just as that light, reflecting off of
someone’s face, burning an image into a negative has vanished, so too has the
original moment. What remains is a
systematic trace of oxidized metal on paper that we can read as an image. My sanding disrupts the coherence of the coding;
a photograph that was formerly rooted in the past has become new in the
present. As I sand away the
emulsion, I breathe in my family’s past.
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| Cloud, Sanded Photo, 2015 |
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| Sled Race, Sanded Photo, 2015 |
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Silver Fog, Sanded Photo, 2016
I began
gilding the sanded photographs last year.
I feel this is intriguing and appropriate as it is the silver in the photographic
emulsion that allows the image vestige to emerge. Unlike the stability of gold, silver oxidizes
and becomes a marker of time. By replacing
the degraded silver in the emulsion with freshly applied silver leaf I invoke a
shift in the perceived duration of time that also adds an uneasy perception of
value, floating over seemingly worthless snapshots. The grafting of this shiny skin is both
gestural and intentional. Gestural, given
the sanding motion that started this work yet intentional given the choices made
by past family members to conceal their native identity.
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