APEIRON
This series consists of photo films that I found and collected in deserted, nearly destroyed buildings in the cities and villages of Chornobyl. Over the last 35 years, these negatives have undergone slow degradation due to radiation and the elements of nature. Passing through stages of disappearance, erasure, and decay, they retained traces of bodies or objects that left their mark on the photosensitive film emulsion.
These slowly dying photonegatives become symbols of our vulnerability to time and nature. The photosensitive layers of the emulsion serve as a metaphor for our own impermanence and fading memories. Art works created from these degraded materials transport us to a world where the boundaries between reality and abstraction blur. We delve into an internal dialogue between human perception and materials destined for oblivion.
In such works, photographs become artifacts of time, evoking not only an interest in the past but also philosophical questions about the nature of memory and human life. Radioactive decay and natural decomposition transform old photographic negatives into objects of artistic reflection, demonstrating how external forces can transform materials into something new and meaningful. These works remind us of the power of time and how the past, even the destroyed and forgotten, can find new life through art. Thus, degraded photonegatives become not only art but also a window into our inner selves, a place where we can immerse ourselves in a world of meanings beyond ordinary perception.
Like a living organism, a photograph is born directly on particles of silver, which ripen, flourish at some point, and then grows old - Roland Barthes.