Parts of Matter

From my previous experiments, images, test strips, and failed enlargements, I create new paper together with a papermaker in a paper mill. We pulp the photographs and form new sheets from the material. During this process, the image and its support completely disintegrate, then reassemble from their fragments. This transformation makes it possible to redefine the function and potential of the photograph. Discarded by-products are reused. The paper base and the light-sensitive emulsion blend together, and the visual information becomes fragmented and unreadable. What appears before the viewer is no longer the original image, but rather the process itself, while the previously hidden internal structure of the photographic paper is also revealed. Through the disintegration and reconstitution of the material, I explore the new possibilities of leftover substances and the relationship between discarded materials and the artwork. This dismantling and rebuilding creates an opportunity to approach photography not only as a visual medium, but also as material, object, and structure. The unique texture and physicality of the handmade paper reveal previously hidden layers, making the inner structure of the photographic paper visible. During this process, I realized that with each pull of the mould, the paper becomes thinner and thinner; thus, material exhaustion becomes an inherent part of the process, just as in my earlier work Development till the Exhaustion, which also centers on the effects of time on material. The paper not only thins but gradually perforates, frays, and eventually, after just a few remaining particles, disappears entirely. I make this visible by casting it onto another freshly made white sheet (the wet fibers bind together). In this way, I obtain a gradually lightening gradient, ranging from a grainy grey to an almost uniformly white paper. The project is about the aesthetics of waste and by-products, the materiality of the photograph, and the broader question of what we consider valuable and what counts as a final image in contemporary visual culture.