Materia is an ongoing photographic project that explores the material conditions of analog photography through light, chemistry, and repetition. Developed in Ukraine during years of ongoing instability, the work turns away from direct description and instead focuses on how photographic surfaces register time and transformation.
The images are made using local, long-expired photographic paper collected from different regions of Ukraine. The aged paper itself contributes to the work, emphasizing the material properties of the photographic surface and how it responds to light, chemistry, and most importantly, chance.
Materia began in 2024 with two portraits of the same person made ten years apart. I continue to work on a collective portrait of young Ukrainian men, now removed from the war-torn landscape. Instead, the old photographic paper becomes the ground for the images. The human form is held within matter, defined by silver particles. In Materia, the nude is not symbolic. It is the simplest surface to register material change. Skin and paper share a certain vulnerability, both registering light and carrying trace.
Works from Materia were firstly presented at the personal exhibition
at Ex Nihilo gallery in Copenhagen in September 2025.
Materia will be published by Void later in 2026.
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