Following my initial experiments with installation and scale, Trust is a unique print created by exposing several 35mm negatives onto a single roll of 1100mm x 15-meter gelatin silver paper. The narrow width of the artwork is attached to a single horizontal bar suspended from the ceiling by two fine cords at opposing ends. The work drops approximately three meters vertically to the floor to traverse in soft undulating waves flowing gently across the length of the installation space.
The process, from exposing the negatives to developing the print, took approximately 5–6 hours. The titling of work denotes the willingness to let go and trust in the photographic process. The title further reflects my presence and intent echoed in the selection of subject matter and viewpoints and process manifest as the artwork to produce a hauntingly evocative creative artifact that emanates Zen aesthetic values associated with impermanence, transience and beauty in the inferred passage of time.
Abstraction enters the work through the darkroom, whereby traditional 35mm film captures are juxtaposed by overlapping end sections of each negative during exposure and hand brushing a single sheet of gelatin silver paper to develop (as opposed to chemical immersion). Further, omitting steps in the darkroom process coerces latent colour from the prints inherent in the black and white materials. This is in the context of creating works of art – grounded in process-based modes of the medium – that embrace novelty and innovation to generate photographic outcomes that promote and reflect “an introspective investigation of my life, surroundings”, and sense of humanity (Damage 2022a, 11). The process, from preparation to exposing the negatives and developing and drying the print, took approximately 24 hours.
As with Respite, Trust exemplifies the synergies between experimental analogue photography and the philosophical tenets of wabi sabi and kintsugi that contest conventional notions of beauty, valuing unwanted variation, such as breakage and wear marks. This relates to leaning into the chaos and mess of my mental health through experimental modes of the medium – particularly in the darkroom – where I can harness the phenomenological interplays between myself and my materials and processes to cultivate random innovative interactions to produce novel outcomes in my work.
Moreover, black and white photography is foundational to my practice. The monochromatic spatial relationships of the medium – texture, tone and form – take precedence in the absence of colour and can be exploited as forms of visual abstraction. As such, the “reductive simplicity” of the medium produces hauntingly evocative images that emanate Zen aesthetic values associated with impermanence, transience, ethereality and beauty in the inferred passage of time (Tobing 2013).
The titling of work denotes the willingness to let go and trust in the photographic process to reflect the presence and intent echoed not only in the selection of subject matter and viewpoints but also in the phenomenological interplays that unfold in real time, akin to the physical and psychological responses lived experience can induce (Berger 1972, 10).
Figure 1. Bedroom darkroom and navigating space. Due to the size of the gelatin silver paper roll I had to find alternative spaces to work in. As such I set up my bedroom as the dry space to expose the negatives, 2022
Figure 4. Chosen for its sealed concrete surface and runoff, the balcony of my flat was converted into a wet chemical treatment area for the project.
Figure 5. Adjacent building neon automatically turns off at 11pm every night, 2022
Figure 6. Once the neon is off, the ambient light spilling onto the balcony is insignificant
Figure 7. Looking onto the balcony from inside the darkened flat
Figure 2. It took months to troubleshoot ways to hold and stabilise the paper during the developing process. Once satisfied, I worked with RMIT studio tech Ceri Hann, who made the final prototypes.
Figure 3. I set up two trays – one for the developer and another for fixer and (omitting stop bath process). The paper roll was loaded vertically on one side, turning it through to the other as the it was processed, 2022
