05 — Photographic Objects / Darkroom
Drawing / Film / Mask / Self-Portrait
This work began with failure.
A sheet of medium-format film, unsuccessfully developed and left without a photographic image, was retained rather than discarded. I began drawing directly onto its surface with ink. The material resisted the gesture: the ink did not adhere easily to the smooth film, producing broken lines, accumulations and irregular marks.
What had failed as a photograph consequently became a surface for drawing.
The resulting image resembles a face, but one that is unstable and fragmented. White and grey marks emerge against the dark ground; lines hesitate, break apart and overlap. The resistance of the film becomes visible within the drawing itself.
The altered film was then used photographically and printed in the darkroom on ILFORD MGRC Glossy paper at 30 × 30 cm. At this point, drawing and photography become difficult to separate: a drawing made on photographic film is transformed by light into a photographic print.
The process continues in the self-portrait. I hold the finished print in front of my own face, using the image as a mask. My physical face disappears and is replaced by another face — one that originated not from the camera, but from drawing, material resistance and photographic failure.
The hands remain visible, holding the constructed face in position. This simple gesture is important: it reveals the mask as an object rather than creating an illusion. The portrait shows simultaneously the body, the image and the act of placing one in front of the other.
What began as an empty negative therefore moves through several states:
failed film → drawing → negative/object → darkroom print → mask → self-portrait.
The failure is not corrected or concealed. It becomes the starting point of the work.
Drawing directly on medium-format film · ink · darkroom silver-gelatin print on ILFORD MULTIGRADE RC Glossy · 30 × 30 cm · print subsequently used as a mask for a photographic self-portrait.
The altered film was then used as a photographic negative and printed in the darkroom on ILFORD MGRC Glossy paper, 30 × 30 cm.