The Imprint
2019
What is imprint we leave on our environment, and what imprint remains on us? In April 2019, I made a cycling journey across Wales, the country which was my home for three years. From Cardiff to Bangor, I cycled and pushed the trailer loaded with my photographic equipment and took the pictures along the road with self-made 4x5 inch camera. My friend, artist and activist Eva Jašková, joined me.
Prior the journey, I made The Imprint Machine out of a discarded 3D printer and programmed it to read the GPS of our cycling route. Aidan Taylor wrote the code in Python3 programming language. Each day of the journey was recorded and imprinted on the photographic paper with the beam of light. The imprint depicted on the photogrpahic paper can be read in many ways as the exposure of the light becomes code itself. Is the line relative to landscape which we traveled and thus similar to a contour line? Or does it relate to the life which we experienced? The imprinted line is the record of the landscape reflecting efforts and actions we do in any journey we undertake in our lives.
The photographs were taken on Ilford Harman Direct Positive paper and developed with the Caffenol-C developer off grid using the dark Decathlon tent as an improvised photographic darkroom, in the locations away from the heavy light-polution. The bottles of mixed developers were multiplying further we cycled and returned with us home. After the arrival back to Cardiff, I made the photograms of the objects collected during the road (seaweed, sheep hair, coal, found shopping list, piece of glass, ticket to the world biggest camera obscura in Aberystwyth) on the leftovers of negative photographic paper Kentmere VC Select Fine Lustre also with the coffee-based developer.
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Ilford Harman Direct Positive paper developed with the Caffenol-C developer.
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Prior the journey, I made The Imprint Machine out of a discarded 3D printer and programmed it to read the GPS of our cycling route. Aidan Taylor wrote the code in Python3 programming language. Each day of the journey was recorded and imprinted on the photographic paper with the beam of light. The imprint depicted on the photogrpahic paper can be read in many ways as the exposure of the light becomes code itself. Is the line relative to landscape which we traveled and thus similar to a contour line? Or does it relate to the life which we experienced? The imprinted line is the record of the landscape reflecting efforts and actions we do in any journey we undertake in our lives.
The photographs were taken on Ilford Harman Direct Positive paper and developed with the Caffenol-C developer off grid using the dark Decathlon tent as an improvised photographic darkroom, in the locations away from the heavy light-polution. The bottles of mixed developers were multiplying further we cycled and returned with us home. After the arrival back to Cardiff, I made the photograms of the objects collected during the road (seaweed, sheep hair, coal, found shopping list, piece of glass, ticket to the world biggest camera obscura in Aberystwyth) on the leftovers of negative photographic paper Kentmere VC Select Fine Lustre also with the coffee-based developer.
Ilford Harman Direct Positive paper developed with the Caffenol-C developer.
Installation view, Going in Circles, Hoxton 253 art project space, London.
