Letegrafia
In analogy to the etymological meaning of the word “photo-graphy”, Letegrafia (“lethe-graph”) signifies the conceptual process of “writing through the invisible”. The project focuses on the creation of latent images seen as potential states of seeing: through the traditional photographic process, the light-sensitive paper is exposed to a negative of reality and left undeveloped. The subject of light exposure is explored in Nature, where a primitive aspect of latency is found. The potential of seeing embodied by the plant is analog to the one perceived inside photography: seeing does not only come through the eye, similarly the visible does not only come through the image. Avoiding any botanical interpretation of the subject, latency is photographically framed to the simple and humble form of a blade of grass. The revelation of the latent image never happens if not through “Alethegraph”: the conceptual gesture of tracing a line on the print with a brush soaked with chemical developer. Performed in the dark, the print opens to the light and continues to absorb Nature’s way of creating, where the quality and quantity of light gradually nuance the line and its latent space on the sides. By transforming light into chemical reaction, photography becomes photo-synthesis.
In analogy to the etymological meaning of the word “photo-graphy”, Letegrafia (“lethe-graph”) signifies the conceptual process of “writing through the invisible”. The project focuses on the creation of latent images seen as potential states of seeing: through the traditional photographic process, the light-sensitive paper is exposed to a negative of reality and left undeveloped. The subject of light exposure is explored in Nature, where a primitive aspect of latency is found. The potential of seeing embodied by the plant is analog to the one perceived inside photography: seeing does not only come through the eye, similarly the visible does not only come through the image. Avoiding any botanical interpretation of the subject, latency is photographically framed to the simple and humble form of a blade of grass. The revelation of the latent image never happens if not through “Alethegraph”: the conceptual gesture of tracing a line on the print with a brush soaked with chemical developer. Performed in the dark, the print opens to the light and continues to absorb Nature’s way of creating, where the quality and quantity of light gradually nuance the line and its latent space on the sides. By transforming light into chemical reaction, photography becomes photo-synthesis.