Amin El Dib
GelatineSilverLightCardboard

Accompanying Text 2004

raises a question and infuses it into the photographic material that concerned me even in my early works: to what extent is it possible to remove a human figure from an image until any recognizable element or even a trace of presence disappears. This notion corresponds to an attempt to create a counterpart in an image, an opposing figure with whom the viewer can engage. I consider "being in the picture" and "being out of the picture" to have the same meaning as "being" and "not being." These are important terms for me in my approach to photographing people. While in previous works I employed methods, such as blurring, cropping or showing the depicted individuals turned away from the camera – or obstructing them with objects in the foreground – in GelatineSilverLightCardboard I destroy prints from these series of works.

An investigation of the physical characteristics of baryt prints is combined with a fragmentation of the depictions of the people photographed. By tearing, breaking the surface and overexposing the paper, the fiber weave of the cardboard and the quality of the surface of the gelatine layer are made visible. A relationship is established between these elements and the represented textures, usually the skin of depicted body parts. In these images a union of different elements (gelatine, cardboard, skin, fragments of the body) is achieved through of taking another photograph. However, the gaze of the viewer falls on an intact surface. Simultaneously the textures of the depicted surfaces are layered with the grains of the two negatives used (one for the destroyed photograph and one for the representation of the destroyed photograph). The sensual materiality of the images is taken in by the eye.

GelatineSilverLightCardboard is, above all, a search for images of vulnerability.

The reappearance of materiality manifested in the process of aging, the dissolution of what is represented back into matter, is an experience that moved me even as a boy looking at ancient Egyptian sculptures. The form of a finely worked torso flows into wooden stumps that recall driftwood instead of legs. The half of a face merges into the broken surface typical of limestone: these are reasons to pursue, also through photography, the material underpinnings of representation. What is sought is the vanishing point of what is still recognizable of a worked form.

In the current phase of transition to digital photography, GelatineSilverLightCardboard can be understood as a means of envisioning the analogue photographic process. Not in terms of an opposition to a new technological development, but as a reference to a kind of photography, the effect of which impacts the viewer through the characteristics of its material.

Amin El Dib, Basel 2004