Reversed / Embodied

I tried to control a memory that kept returning in dreams. I made separate negatives from 3D body scans and printed them again and again. A split-second glitch broke the images apart. It became a moment of release after years of obsessive thoughts.

I wanted to try photographing a feeling without access to the person it was connected to. At first, it sounded fun to attempt something impossible to photograph. I did not expect the experiment to change what photography meant to me.

This annoying feeling began with one particular moment years ago. It kept returning in my thoughts and dreams. Even escaping to another country had not made it go away. Each return made the memory hazier and added details I could no longer separate from what had happened. I began photographing to find some way through it.

I first photographed two friends kissing on the parquet floor of our Berlin apartment. I printed the digital photographs as negatives on transparent adhesive paper mounted on plastic, then used them to expose fresh sheets of photographic paper. Printing again and again took my mind off the obsessive thoughts. The repetition helped.

Later, I realised that the figures could not exist together within the work. I separated the surface images of their bodies from the geometry of LiDAR scans and made individual negatives. I could reposition them and change the distance between them. Controlling their relationships within the image gave me the illusion that I could also control my memories.

While clicking through the assembled images in Keynote, I caught a momentary glitch. The figures fragmented, duplicated and shifted. That instant became a moment of release.

Only later did I understand the work as a process of connecting with my own shadow. Now I finally feel that this process is complete.

I had started with a playful experiment in capturing the impossible.