PORTRAIT / PRESENCE

Analogue black-and-white photography
Hasselblad 500 C/M
Carl Zeiss Planar 80 mm f/2.8
ILFORD HP5 Plus 400
Self-developed in Rodinal
Hand-printed in the darkroom on ILFORD MGRC
Silver gelatin print
30.5 × 40.6 cm

The portrait begins before the final image.

In the first image, the negative strips remain visible as a sequence. The same person appears repeatedly, shifting slightly in posture, expression and distance. These successive exposures reveal the duration of the encounter — the subtle changes that take place between photographer and subject before one image is finally selected.

The second image isolates one of these moments. Seated directly before the camera, the figure appears calm and self-possessed. The chair, curtain and surrounding interior remain visible, preserving something of the circumstances in which the portrait was made.

Presented together, the negative and the finished photograph reveal two states of the same encounter.

The negative preserves possibility — several gestures, several expressions, several potential portraits. The final print transforms one of those possibilities into a singular presence.

Portraiture becomes less an attempt to define who a person is than an observation of how a person becomes present before the camera — through time, gesture, attention and the act of looking.

Portrait / Presence considers the photographic portrait as an encounter suspended between intimacy and distance, between the living moment and the image that remains.