ANTICAMERA(OF THE EYE) #P
I had heard about photographs made of potatoes and thought it strangely intriguing. More precisely, they were color photographs made with potato starch. In fact, when examined closely, glass plate “autochromes” also reveal grains of colored starch, resembling painting, in the image’s details. The array of starch, artificially colored in red, blue, and green, is said to be identical to that of visual cells in the human retina.
I planned to obtain unused, dry autochrome plates produced around 100 years ago, process it as is, and make prints from the results. A carefully packaged and very old fashioned box arrived. I opened the box in the darkroom and realized that time does not exist inside this box. The four sheets of retina inside knew nothing of the world outside or the passage of time. The fragments of retina, exposed to the world for the first time, transformed darkness accumulated over a century into color.
