ONE

ONE explores the fusion of body and image into one physical entity. Using bodily traces, chemical reactions, heat, and touch, the work transforms photographs into material objects revealing presence, vulnerability, and transience.

ONE is an ongoing photographic project that examines what happens when the human body and its photographic representation merge into a single physical entity. Through experimental, material-based processes, the work questions identity, presence, and the boundary between subject and image.

The series seeks to move beyond the traditionally flat photograph, transforming it into an object-like, almost sculptural presence that exists as one unit with the person portrayed. Each image is the result of processes that could not exist without the physical involvement of the subject. Photographic film is stored for extended periods in bodily fluids provided by the portrayed individual, allowing the material to chemically react with the body itself. During storage and development, the film undergoes visible transformations: traces of corrosion, discoloration, and decay emerge on the surface of the image. In another process, photographic techniques are combined with contact prints and the use of heat and fire, resulting in images that exist through, and represent, direct touch.

These marks are not defects but integral elements of the work. They function as bodified vanitas - visual evidence of vulnerability, transience, and the inevitability of physical change. The resulting portraits and body studies appear simultaneously present and eroding, suggesting that identity is neither fixed nor separable from the body that produces it.

Initiated in 2018 and informed by experimental approaches developed during the Nomansland project (book published in 2022 by 89books at Polycopies), ONE continues an investigation into self-awareness and the tension between individual identity and external structures, while giving photography what it historically lacked - a body. While rooted in portraiture, the project proposes photography as a site of physical encounter rather than mere representation.

By embedding bodily traces of liquids and touch directly into the photographic material, ONE reframes the photograph as an index of contact and transformation. The image becomes a witness to touch, time, and dissolution - not a neutral depiction, but a shared physical record of presence.

The project remains ongoing and is envisioned to expand beyond human subjects to include spatial environments, further exploring how physical traces can bind representation and reality into a single material form.

- Tobias Ahlbrecht