Dark Matter

This series seeks to question the materiality of digital photography, thereby challenging its very definition as the writing of light. This involves breaking free from the fundamental technical operations of the picture-taking process (framing, composition, focus adjustment and exposure settings) by minimizing the operator's intervention, reactivating at the same time the myth of the automatic genesis of the photographic image. Here, this is the camera alone that creates the image, through an exposure triggered automatically when powered on, in complete darkness, and ending all by itself a few hours later once its battery depleted. Deprived of light information, the electronic sensor thus only records a residual random signal, generating a photograph entirely consisting of digital noise. Areas of it are then randomly selected using a computer program and automatically enlarged to the size and resolution of the original image. Freed from intentionality, the resulting photographs also suppress any reference to reality and its representation. Like electronic phosphenes, they reveal the iconic material specific to digital photography. The title Dark Matter refers to cosmic dark matter as a humorous allegory of photographic ontology, which shares its characteristics : of a nature still unknown to this day despite the abundant literature produced on the subject. Following a similar approach, 'Dark Matter' aims to uncover the iconic material of digital photography. Stemming from an experiment seeking to minimize the operator's intervention during the image production process , I goes against the very definition of photography as writing with light. Here, the camera alone generates the image, the exposure starting automatically when powered on, lens covered, and ending once the battery depleted. The result is an image entirely composed of digital noise, areas of which were then randomly selected by computer software and enlarged to the same size and resolution as the original image. The title 'Dark Matter' refers to cosmic dark matter as a humorous allegory of photographic ontology, which shares its characteristics : of a nature that is still unknown to this day despite the abundant literature produced on the subject. This series is part of a larger body of work initiated in 2019, titled 'Palimpsests'. This term refers to a parchment where the original writing has been erased to make way for a new text on the same support. It accurately reflects the inquiries driving the intent behind this project. Indeed these photographs take the form of contemporary rewritings of iconic works from the history of photography, translated into the new context of digital society. Initiating a dialogue with techniques and theories of the past, they offer a reflection about the concept of post-photography and question the evolution of the medium in the era of its alleged disappearance.