Incidencies of light.
Point de vue du Gras, made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, is considered the first permanent photograph. The image made through the hole of a camera obscura on a pewter plate, captures the view of the landscape from the threshold of the author’s window. The impact of this image on human consciousness has been profound, as it shows time adhering to the very moment of invention and, at the same time, is a portrait of the author’s intimate space that exists outside the frame.
From this moment in photography, during the confinement in 2020, I was wondering about memory and how it is defined by the spaces we inhabit. The bonds we form with them and the memories we build of them through inhabitation become intangible images in our minds.
From this exploration I made a series of images, each one is made using an alternative process derived from my research on the light transfer qualities of the paper pulp to the photosensitive material, I call this process “papierogram”. To do this, I enabled the space of my room as a camera obscura, controlling the passage of light through an optical structure from a hole in the window to the photographic paper, I exposed a negative made up of layers of paper meticulously overlayed over the photographic paper, through them it creates qualities of volume, light and shadow in the final image.
The intention of the images is to make a visual overlap between them to create a dialogue with memory based on the non-linear reconstruction of experiences and moments of my life in the spaces I have inhabited. These places – familiar and foreign – have been modified, destroyed or adapted to the routine of other lives. Therefore, these images are a way to re-inhabit them. Thus, through this process the images that arise in the mind materialize and are compiled as memories. This piece is a nod to that first Niépce photograph to investigate the interior of the window in my consciousness.