VESTIGE

Vestige is a series of lumen prints in which my hair, saliva, blood, breastmilk, and bathwater are placed directly onto silver gelatin paper. Each image emerges from a collaboration between my body and light. In these color-field photograms, the female form, traditionally subjected to an onslaught of societal pressure, objectification, and idealization it defies conventional representation. Instead of a recognizable figure, the body becomes gesture, texture, and residue. These abstractions challenge the viewer’s expectations of portraiture, shifting attention from appearance to essence. Throughout the series, the recurring motif of the circle is not a direct reference to the body, but rather a symbolic acknowledgment of its absence, an echo of what is no longer visible yet still deeply present.

Lumen printing is a camera-less photographic process that relies on time, sunlight, and the chemical sensitivity of silver gelatin paper. The works are made by exposing the paper to natural or artificial light for extended periods. The paper develops outside the darkroom, requiring only sodium thiosulfate to fix the image. Though they often resemble paintings with their muted colors and organic forms, these images are inherently photographic. Their tonal shifts and hues are the direct result of material and environmental variables: the brand and age of the paper, the duration of exposure, and the quality of UV light. Each print is singular and unrepeatable, bearing the marks of both chance and intention.

Vestige extends my ongoing exploration of figurative and portrait photography. While much of my previous work has centered on the representation of the body, this project seeks to redefine how the body might appear, or disappear, within an image. By removing the familiar contours of flesh, I reinterpret the gaze, exchanging sensuality for the sublime and visibility for suggestion. What remains are physical remnants, traces of bodily fluids and materials, that testify to my existence. These imprints function as evidence, both literal and metaphorical, of the body’s persistence and its inevitable impermanence.

In this work, the photographic process becomes an act of embodiment. The interaction between my materials and the photosensitive surface transforms the paper into a site of encounter, a place where the corporeal meets the chemical, and where life leaves its spectral imprint. Each image captures not a likeness but a moment of transformation, a meditation on presence, decay, and renewal.

Ultimately, Vestige is a meditation on identity, mortality, and the female body as both subject and author. By merging process and intention, abstraction and evidence, these images offer a quiet resistance to the gaze that seeks to define or contain. They ask what remains of us when form fades.

Based in Brooklyn, NY