Overcast

Overcast is a photographic-video work exhibited at Msg. as part of Format Festival 2023. Overcast (2022) is a series of monochromatic prints and an accompanying film that observe the primary aspects of what photography can be: the permeation of photo-sensitive paper, light travelling at 300,000 km/sec (186,000 miles/sec), and chemical formulations, that make the method of making, and the composition of photography, the subject of the work. Overcast is produced using a Cameraless process where resin-coated paper is exposed to electromagnetic waves. Resin-coated paper has an emulsion layer of silver halide crystals which, when hit by photons, form microscopic metallic grains. When developed, the grains convert to black metallic crystals amplifying the exposure some 108 (100.000,000 x) times. Here, the premise of overexposure, where too much light hits the surface of the paper, is articulated as ‘overcast’, a condition synonymous with dullness. As the seeming antithesis to exposure, this binary relation (of covering and exposure) is inferred in the film where the substrate’s change from white to black materialises through chemical mediation.