The first prints

TWO WAYS OF BEING REAL

The sheet sits halfway inside the machine and does not move. On the small display twelve bars glow side by side, two of them with a warning sign. Twelve inks for a picture that once came out of a single instant film pack.

What is being made here is not the copy of a photograph. It is the form in which a sequence of eight becomes visible as a whole at all. Eight Polaroids, each one a single object, and you have to lay them side by side to grasp that they belong together. Printed on one sheet, in their fixed order, they turn into one work instead of eight small pictures.

The printer needs a few minutes for that. This is the fast part.

The slow part lies next to it and cannot be hurried. The emulsions are being made from the originals right now: the image layer is lifted off its backing and transferred onto watercolour paper. It shifts, it folds, sometimes it tears. That is not a mishap, that is the process. Each of these sheets exists exactly once, and none of them looks the way it was planned. When they are finished is not up to my calendar.

The project is running at two speeds at the moment. The prints are here. The unique pieces need more time.

The first prints can be acquired from today. There is no shopping cart and no order button. If you would like one, write to me through the series page, and I decide which copy goes to whom. Shipping and payment are discussed afterwards. A share of the proceeds goes directly to the person you see in the pictures.

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