I’ve been thinking about loneliness, and that we’re possibly in a “Loneliness Epidemic.” I discovered years ago that making artworks with my hands is one of the best antidotes to loneliness. One of my favorite places for this practice is in the chemical darkroom. There’s wonder and magic there, under the safelight, seeing an image appear on a formerly blank sheet of paper. Though I’ve made uncountable pictures this way, now I’m drawing with light, directly onto the darkroom paper, which is called a Photogram, and also drawing – or perhaps painting – with chemicals, which is called a Chemigram. These techniques rely on my hands and their movement – it’s direct, physical work. The results are abstract images with no identifiable people, places, or things, images which are rooted in the beginnings of photography while rejecting the medium’s representational power.
There is a pervasive idea that the photograph is a window onto the world, as it exists. As a consequence, the material holding the photographic image is deemphasized, even devalued. However, as part of their hand-made creation, these photo-artworks rely on the physicality of paper: they bend, flutter, are gathered, punctured, and bound with crude stitches that would not be possible in another material. I see this “wound mending” as an action, beyond the image, to make visible the otherwise invisible sensation of loneliness.
David Ondrik 