Travessia = Crossing
Travessia is a change in state, a voyage without return. The passage of time is important to a crossing (it should not be determined) as well as learning (the sum of knowledge gathered during the crossing) and unexpected events (to make it unique). The essay presented here interprets a crossing, that could be my own story of making photographs everyday while accepting interferences and noise of materials and equipment that have passed their finest hour and researching to be able to use them like this.
This story starts in Czech Republic with a roll of film made there at the end of 1980’s. As this roll got expired I started photographing. Twenty years later and it was kept in a humid closet with its gelatin serving as food to funghi and bacteria very slowly. The film was perfect for it, it came in a paper box (instead of metal, more exposed) and had no markings, allowing the use of its full area, including the borders.
For me, I spent these 20 years experimenting, reserching and learning about many different photographic processes. I could make an archaeology of old and obsolete methods and compare them to the digital novelty. The same 20 years in which the industry made the change from film to digital sensor and checked every possible step or experiment looking for a definitive answer, making a lot of tools prematurely obsolete.
So when I met this roll of film in 2011, I picked up a sort of challenge. I tested a small portion of it and devised a method to make the best use of the destruction caused by this contamination. It was risk, but viable and possibly interesting. I decided to take it during a trip and see what it could offer me, trying my luck with the mixture of landscape and the drawings done by the funghi. Of this challenge resulted a few hundreds of images. I picked through them and scanned a few.
Image is not only silver, but also the scar left by a funghus.
Crossing was not only accept this, but to make it more intendely.
Crossing is to get here. Here image is silver and scar.
Guilherme Maranhão
