Inner Garden

Process: The project was built from the meeting of two distinct materials. In the first stage, analog portrait negatives shot on Ilford HP5 Plus 400 (35 mm) film were brought into direct contact with fire. The burn marks, blistering, and melting points left on the surface produced a visual language that was uncontrollable and only half accidental. The voids opened by the burning emulsion became spaces that carry both the destruction and the potential of the image. In the second stage, leaf textures gathered in different locations were photographed with a Nikon D610. The deformed negatives were scanned at high resolution; their tonal values were inverted and rebuilt through contrast work. The plant textures were then placed into the voids left by the flames using Adobe Photoshop. Each image was chosen from multiple trials and framings. Throughout the process, the aim was not to separate burnt matter from living tissue, but to make the transition between them imperceptible. 4014*5562 px