SELF-PORTRAIT — COMING FROM THE COLD

Geneva, May 2026
Analogue black-and-white photography
Hasselblad 500 C/M
Carl Zeiss Distagon 50 mm f/4
Kentmere Pan 200
Self-developed in Rodinal
Hand-printed in the darkroom on ILFORD MULTIGRADE FB Matt
Silver gelatin print
12.7 × 17.8 cm

Made shortly after returning to Geneva from a long artist residency in Thailand, Coming from the Cold emerged from the abrupt physical experience of moving between two climates and two environments.

Wrapped in a blanket against the cold, the body becomes almost entirely concealed. Clothing and gesture disappear beneath a protective surface, leaving the face as the principal sign of identity and presence.

Yet the image gradually moves beyond the circumstances of the self-portrait. Returning to Geneva also brought a renewed awareness of people living without shelter and of the vulnerability of a body exposed to cold without the protection of a private interior.

The photograph does not attempt to represent that experience. Rather, this awareness enters the image indirectly, transforming an ordinary gesture of keeping warm into a reflection on shelter, protection and human vulnerability.

Within Portrait / Presence, the self-portrait becomes less a description of appearance than a record of a physical and emotional state — a body returning from elsewhere, seeking warmth, and becoming newly conscious of the fragile boundary between inside and outside, protection and exposure, comfort and vulnerability.