Free Particles
digital photography, broken and reassembled lenses 50 mm f/1.8, 50 mm f/1.4, 24 mm f/2.8, 2008 - 2010, 2016 - ongoing
In the summer of 2008, I dropped to the ground a cheap plastic lens and the impact split the front and the back group of lenses. I decided to explore the world through the broken lenses by reassembling and shifting them. Much to my surprise, I managed to obtain some appealing visual results. All bright sources, lights of the city, street lamps, traffic lights and glaring labels were twisted and distorted by optical aberrations and refractions. This uncommon optical reality fascinated me to explore its esthetic peculiarities. Over time I deconstructed and reassembled more lenses.
In ‘Free Particles’ I use the camera in a highly customized way to expresses my subjectivity. I can freely shift, tilt and invert each lens. These modifications cause refractions, vignetting and blur across the picture plane and impressive magnifications of light sources. As distortions and huge colour spots make many objects unrecognizable, reality appears to be infiltrated with unknowable elements. The photos represent the light as something mysterious, the behaviour of which we barely know by empirical experience.
Moreover, these photographs represent my conviction that the use of “window” as a metaphor for photography doesn’t convey the medium’s characteristics well enough. As optical instruments are visible inside the frame, the photographs are no longer windows, but rather tunnels. This metaphor implies that photographic reality is always created by light tunneling through camera obscura.