Revelation

From the earliest Mesopotamian accounts to the birth of philosophy with Thales, the aquatic element is the symbol of primordial creation. A hidden place, where light penetrates only with difficulty, sheltering forms of life that are little known, the depths of the waters are a metaphor for the matrix, where gestation unfolds away from all eyes. The photographer’s darkroom is an instance of this. Paradoxically, the one who draws with light must do so in darkness. Even more, any intrusion of light during the process of creation irreversibly destroys it. Creation remains a mystery.

The images in this series are drawn from autochromes dating from the years 1900–1920, which remained silent in a trunk in a religious institution in Jerusalem for a century before being digitized by the artist. A photograph is a being that has the privilege of being born twice. Two moments punctuate its existence. The first is that of the flash of light that impregnates the paper with the image coming from the negative. The second is the moment of revelation, which follows the moment of creation but is not identical to it. It is the moment when the image becomes recognizable on the paper.

Several temporalities combine here: an autochrome requires a long exposure, sometimes several tens of minutes, then it was digitized using a digital camera. The photographs were printed using a gelatin silver printing process from negatives made from the digitized versions with an analog camera negatives, then photographed with a cellphone allowing the light during the shooting to be reduced to a minimum. The red of the monochromes is the red of the safety light of the darkroom.

​​Dr. Guillaume Tahar