The Skin of Memory, features images that resemble drawings or intaglio prints, but are photographs. To create them I use mordançage, an experimental acid-bath process of traditional black and white photographs in which dark areas of gelatin silver emulsion separate and lift from the paper to create veils and tears. From a reproducible silver gelatin print thus emerges an altered, irreproducible, unpredictable image. This process visualizes how memories shift, deteriorate and develop to reveal a hidden subplot, a new layer of reality beyond the lens capture that time, regret, experience have pulled. The changed structure of the photographs, with different centers of light and newly emerged areas of darkness, aim to speak for human vulnerability in the face of memory shaping the present.--Ellie Ivanova
COMMENTS