The Naked House

the naked house / Darkroom

Since 2009 I am working on a series that I call «Darkroom». It is about photograms, which are produced in the analogue colour laboratory. Light-sensitive photo paper is given a direct exposure, without a negative. The photograms can only be produced in the pitch-dark because I am working with colour paper and the picture can’t be prepared in the red light. So I am putting myself into a situation in which the picture can’t be controlled in its developing process, it can be guessed, sensed by touch in the dark.

It is only visible after developing. This reversal and slowdown of the picture’s production questions the photography which we all know and which we think to have at our disposal. The photogram’s radicalness that creates a kind of pictogram or code is a graphic balancing act. The final picture emphasizes mostly the shadow, the absence of an object or a person and shows thereby an almost physical proximity – There was something, where did it go?

Working in a completely black room makes vision impossible, transforms the photographer into a blind person. The blind person creates the picture. Other senses are being sharpened and the perception is being changed. This process is just as important as the result - a concentration into the void, the loneliness in the moment of taking the picture and the final picture as a sketch, as a possibility, as a vision.

all © erdt

all © erdt