Revised Version (2025)
Presented at the member exhibition of the BBK Leipzig:
KUNST | RAUM #3: Licht
Vernissage: 29 July, 6 p.m.
Exhibition period: 30 July–13 August 2025
Location: Werkschauhalle der Spinnerei, Leipzig
Negative Memory
35mm negatives, thread
The negatives come from my private and professional archive. I was faced with the question of what to do with my analogue photo archive. I had scanned all the negatives and was about to throw them away. A moment's hesitation gave me cause to think about an alternative use for them. That's how I came up with the idea of sewing the negatives together along their perforations.
This gave me more time to look at the material and think not only about the content, but also about the medium and the memory itself.
A negative is an interesting moment in the development of an image – it has already emerged from the latent image, but still needs to be translated into a positive that corresponds to our normal visual perception. It no longer has the hidden potential of the latent image, but it also does not yet have the clarity of a positive. For me, it represents the indeterminate moments of memory that vaguely anticipate an event. I am fascinated by the moments of possibility and the various translations that are physically and chemically inscribed into a material carrier in analogue photography. Digital photography, with its seemingly immediate results, lacks the physical-chemical mystique that made photography so interesting to me. Nostalgia for the darkroom.
First presented at the duo exhibition Jour Fix,
Houloc, Aubervilliers/Paris, September 2019
