MATERIAL
PIECES
FEB 2024
glas, photo emulsion
5 lenses, series of glas negatives, series of glas objects
This project emerged from an engagement with the material glass and the question: How do I act as a individual within defined systems?
One very clearly defined system that I am familiar with, and in which glass plays a central role, is analog photography. Glass appears in the lens, in the viewfinder prism, and as a carrier medium, to name just a few examples.
Photography is a system whose aim is to depict reality as truthfully as possible. It is considered an honest medium and is often used as evidence, as it stands for objectivity. Yet photography is always subject to the person behind it. It is inevitably shaped by subjectivity. My intention was therefore to allow subjectivity to enter the process and to make it visible.
I divided photography into five systems: System Light, Light Guidance, Light Capture and Light Reproduction.
I then asked myself how I could intervene in these systems and processes and make my distorted view, my subjectivity, visible.
System Light Guidence - lens production and taking photographs
I produced my own lenses. They are blown from glass tubes. Each lens is individual, with thickenings and irregularities. They emerged intuitively through my actions, which remain visible in the final result.
I built my own camera obscura, in which I exposed paper and glass. I used my self-blown lenses as the optical element.
System Light Capture
Negative film and photographic paper were enclosed in glass as a carrier medium. The motif disappears; only the silver or the gases react with the glass. Two-dimensional becomes three-dimensional.