(A) Play of Three Magical Particles 2009

(A) Play of Three Magic Particles: Light, Dust, and Photographic Grain.

(Work in Progress) 2009

Pinhole Photographic Paper Negatives and Positives on Fibre-Based Paper

Dimensions approx 100 x 300 cms

Using a large pinhole camera obscura, this series explores duration and the documentation of time through the play of light, dust, and the body. Playing with ideas of suspension (of time, dust, the body) and inversion (time, the body, the image, reversal, upside-down, positive/negative).

In an image, I wished to somehow do the impossible, to capture the suspension of the magical particles, to hold time and possibility. To capture the passage of the fallen/falling matter and hold/capture, it in a grainy grey cloud in the photograph. As Celeste Olalquiaga says in “The Artificial Kingdom”, “Dust is what connects the dreams of yesteryear with the touch of nowadays. It is the aftermath of the collapse of illusions, a powdery cloud that rises abruptly and then begins falling on things, gently covering their bright, polished surfaces.”

I wanted to prevent this downward journey and keep it in the air. If we can keep things up in the air, the possibilities are endless… But as they fall and land, there is no turning back, decisions are made, things enter in the past, a place from which they cannot return…