Abstract Dialogue

This project contains abstract photograms made using only light, time and photographic paper. The work circles around time and grief. Pubished as a book 2018 by Blackbook Publications.

During a manic period that followed a hard separation and a friend’s sudden suicide, I did over 1,000 of photograms. The work made me think about time.

The photographic image depicts time, one-eighth of a second, sometimes more, sometimes less. Hence, what shows on the photo papers is time. There is an old paradox about time that I read long ago, and recounting from my memory it goes something like this:

Imagine time as the past, the present and the future. Then think about the present. How thick is it? It is the border between the past and the future.

The paradox is that the past does not exist. It has existed, but it no longer does. The future does not exist either, but it will. The present is nothing, a nothingness that separates what does not exist from what does not exist.

But in the darkroom, the present unveils itself on a lightsensitive paper as it is hit by light. The present is visible there as a frozen imprint. That is how thick the now is, as thick as a photographic paper.