This project starts with a simple white envelope containing black-and-white photographs inherited from my grandfather...
The photographs bear no measurement grids or technical framing; instead, they reveal an exploratory practice...
Archival photographs can be more than historical repositories as they provide material agency...
The photographs are home-developed. The shiny, hard paper is cut haphazardly.
Susan Schuppli’s concept of material witnesses evokes nonhuman entities that archive their complex interactions...
My grandfather’s photographic skills and access to equipment were enabled, at least in part, by the now-forgotten East-bloc darkroom culture...
Working with this collection is not primarily about preserving family memory. What matters more is the haunting surplus of meaning.
The way the photographs place microbial colonies, the lab environment, and his self-portrait side by side breaks with the idea of science as a “view from nowhere.”
Looking at these images does not automatically produce care; attending empathically to archival fragments is not itself a care act.
This redirection opens space for more ecological imaginaries of knowledge production — imaginaries grounded in relational accountability.