Sections
2016-2022
Sections, 2016-2022, archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle Photo Rag Baryta paper, dimensions variable
installation view: Hypothesis: Everything is Leaf, Foto Wien, Atelier Augarten, Vienna, Austria, 2022, image by Zalán Péter Salát and Csaba Villányi
Photographs taken of vegetal segments on 19th-century British and French microscope slides. The segments of plants were enclosed between two glass plates before the polluting effects of the second industrial revolution and preceding motorisation, mass production and the emergence of synthetic materials. Their forms clearly refer to the species of the given plants, but at the same time they were part of a concrete living organism. These plants had their own unique characteristics, life histories and relationships with the environment. Thus a segment represents not only a species but its own self, a non-human ‘person’ from which they were excised. Most segments were collected from Asian, African and South American regions which were occupied and experienced violent colonisation, slavery and exploitation of natural resources.
Photographs taken of vegetal segments on 19th-century British and French microscope slides. The segments of plants were enclosed between two glass plates before the polluting effects of the second industrial revolution and preceding motorisation, mass production and the emergence of synthetic materials. Their forms clearly refer to the species of the given plants, but at the same time they were part of a concrete living organism. These plants had their own unique characteristics, life histories and relationships with the environment. Thus a segment represents not only a species but its own self, a non-human ‘person’ from which they were excised. Most segments were collected from Asian, African and South American regions which were occupied and experienced violent colonisation, slavery and exploitation of natural resources.