SPECULUM TEMPORIS (The mirror of Time)

Exhibition “The Mirror of Time” (40 contemporary daguerreotypes) aligns with the French centenary celebrations “Bicentenaire de la Photographie”, marking two hundred years of photographic history on an international scale.

As a daguerreotypist, I incorporate a 19th-century process into a contemporary, photographic, and conceptual practice. I strive not only to keep a historical technique alive, but also to make the original magic of photography tangible once again: it is a moment when light itself reveals a memory. Its unique character—the reflective surface, the image’s great fragility, the slowness of the creative process, and the uniqueness of each work—offers me a counterbalance to the fast-paced, modern consumption of images.

My current work is strongly influenced by ancient Latin texts and by poetry from the 18th and 19th centuries. Ideas such as transience, melancholy, and memory are currently recurring themes in my images. By combining this nineteenth-century technique with contemporary imagery and ideas, a dialogue emerges between the past and the present, between historical craftsmanship and current artistic reflection. For many, the images initially draw on a variety of sources: the vanitas tradition, early photographic techniques, women’s poetry from bygone eras, medieval chants, and a series of death masks. In my view, however, they are all connected by one fundamental question: “How does humanity relate to the time allotted to it?”