Honorable Mention
Untitled (Kmart; Assembled, No. 2)
DESCRIPTION
Unique Cameraless Chromogenic Assemblage on expired paper, 21" x 25"From the project, "The After Life of Things: Discarded, Collected, Assembled"
This piece is a cameraless assemblage, made without the use of a negative. The assemblage is composed of four sheets of unexposed, expired paper, processed directly from a decades-old box of Kodak paper. Without the exposure to light that typically occurs during darkroom enlarging, this cameraless process uniquely isolates the effects of time on the aging paper. The resulting color shifts and markings make a striking parallel to Modernist painting.
"Untitled (Kmart; Assembled, No. 2)" is part of the project, "The After Life of Things: Discarded, Collected, Assembled," which uses expired photographic paper to explore the nature of photographic materials, the materiality of things and our relationship to them.
The project celebrates the wonder of the traditional darkroom by utilizing the typically unwanted color shifts and random marks characteristic of expired papers to bring fresh life to a creative practice in an age of its demise.
With digital media and the virtual world now firmly established in our collective experience, "The After Life of Things" celebrates the persistence of the physical object and its life in our imagination.
AUTHOR
David Wolf is a devoted film photographer, making both color and black and white prints by hand in the darkroom. The passage of time is a continual source of inspiration for David’s work; he is drawn to making images that express how change becomes visible in the physical world. The presence of memory in our lives and the power of beauty to redeem loss are at the heart of much of his work.In his ongoing project, “The After Life of Things,” David explores the material qualities of expired color paper to create new work from analogue darkroom materials thought to be obsolete. The project draws a parallel between discarded objects and discontinued photo papers as found objects, utilizing the typically unwanted color shifts and random marks characteristic of expired papers as a metaphor for impermanence and mortality.
The project’s works are both image and object, including assemblages comprised of multiple prints as well as mural-sized wall pieces. Submitted to the Chromatic Awards are cameraless pieces in the “Abstract” category, and negative-based prints in “Fine Art.”
