C-364
Photograph
C-364
2003
Chromogenic development paper, scratched
Image: 13 3/4 × 10 13/16 in. (34.9 × 27.5 cm)
Purchase
2004.0064.0003
Inscriptions verso (pencil): [title] / [signature] 2003
TextJust as action painters in the 1950s approached the canvas as “an arena in which to act,” Marco Breuer confronts photographic papers as ground to be mined. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he applied matches, gunpowder, and heat guns to gelatin silver papers, releasing their aesthetic potential using energy from heat and light. A few years later, he recognized additional possibilities in the multiple layers of chemical emulsions found in color photographic papers, scratching into them repeatedly and processing them multiple times. In the context of A Matter of Memory, the results of these acts of creative destruction suggest a frenetic attempt to excavate the locus of memory hidden beneath the surface of a photograph.
