Light in the Fold

Light in the Fold uses folded paper structures to generate camera-less photographs. In the darkroom, simple origami forms guide light across photographic paper, producing abstract images from the interaction of gesture, material, and colour.

A sheet of paper changes each time it is folded. Pressure, movement, and time leave marks that remain even after it is unfolded. These traces reorganise the surface, altering how light travels across it and allowing images to emerge from within the structure.

This project uses camera-less photography to explore how folded paper structures can generate images. I work with simple origami forms learned in childhood — cranes, stars, boats — returning in the darkroom to gestures that are familiar yet often overlooked. Between the enlarger and photographic paper, the playful simplicity and geometric order inherent in these forms are re-examined.

The forms are folded and sometimes unfolded back into flat sheets, allowing traces of pressure and gesture to remain visible. Through repeated folds and unfolds, the surface carries a history of movement that becomes a structure influencing how light interacts with photographic paper.

Working with papers of different materials — including variations in transparency, thickness, and surface — I manipulate the path of light and the distribution of colour during exposure. Changes in angle, tension, or distance alter transmission, reflection, and diffusion, producing abstract images that emerge from the interaction between material, gesture, and illumination, where control and unpredictability coexist.

The resulting images reveal rich colour and geometric relationships that retain a sense of lightness and playfulness while simultaneously acquiring a new visual order through the transformation of light and material. Familiar forms are thus re-encountered and re-perceived, where childhood visual experience meets present perception.

Light in the Fold approaches photography as a process of formation rather than representation, where images arise through the transformation of surface, structure, light, and colour.