This past exhibition presentation is part of our “Looking Back to the Future” project, aiming to provide a bird’s eye view on cultural initiatives, texts, publications and exhibitions over the last three decades (and beyond) that have contributed in defining contemporary Romanian photographic expression.
Steampunk Autochrome is apparently a milestone – now officially concluded. It is rather a style – the style of Nicu Ilfoveanu’s color photographs. A style defined by art critic Ștefan Tiron as a juxtaposition of technical processes, personal experiences and found objects. It is the fact of photography itself combined with the memory of the developing process, the metal box frame, the light and the color spot.
Every landscape is desolate, every ruin is a time, it all seems to be tied to how the artist perceives and communicates the tension between object and subject, between what is in front of the object and what emerges after the shutter has released. At times, he straightens out the vanishing point with his hand and undertakes the process without appropriating the subject.
Devoid of a human presence, his color photographs are nevertheless full of structures, traces of transience. You can sense the continuity of something you can’t put your finger on, but which fills the image before your eyes; the controversy of a conflict that seems to have happened but appears to have not yet occurred.
Nicu Ilfoveanu’s box-camera becomes the pretext for the undertaking and recording of memories shared by all. Unseen histories whose traces we are aware of.
As the autochrome process was used during the First World War by a division of the French army (Societe Photographique de l’Armee), so does Nicu Ilfoveanu seem to use a slow technical process that can no longer capture dynamics or tragedies but only sublimates experiences, reducing the deployment of forces to the wall of a ruin.
Nicu Ilfoveanu’s photographs in the steampunk autochrome cycle are like a limitless and undifferentiated exploration of the landscape, be it urban, industrial, native or foreign, but with the need of that landscape marked by traces of transience. Or similar to the traces that history has left imprinted on personal histories.
text accompanying the 2007 exhibition by Cosmina Chituc
On this occasion we likewise announce a new publication: a book dedicated to the artist and featuring images from the steampunk autochrome series as well as a text by Matei Câlția in dialog with Nicu Ilfoveanu.
A friend of my mom’s who knew I did photography gave her an old camera for me as a gift. It was a box-camera, a small wooden box wrapped in leather that looks a lot like the old-time doctor’s kits, only much smaller. I was glad I got it, but I’m not too crazy about old gadgets, I don’t collect them; still, if it’s useful it’s very good so I took it as a surprise and that’s all.
But when I took it apart, I noticed that it had film inside and I closed it immediately. It only lasted a split second. I took the camera to the darkroom, took out the film, which had a wooden mount (so it was a 50-year-old film) and processed it; I made a strong solution and two images did appear on the film.
When I started to work with the box-camera I “received” an image that was not mine, therefore I tried to take pictures as if I had not inserted the film and I had not pressed the shutter. I processed the film, and the images only belonged to me from that moment on…
When I present the work, the label says photography, but it is only photography at the beginning, when I photograph, when I shoot, “to take a picture”, when I obtain a negative; then another type of work begins, which is less about photography and more about interpreting an image, “faire une photo”.
When I started working with the box-camera I “received” an image that was not mine, therefore I tried to take pictures as if I had not inserted the film and I had not pressed the shutter. I processed the film, and the images only belonged to me from that moment on…
I work a lot with expired film. If I shoot the expired slide underexposed, the pigment settles much more strongly. I have a big stock in the fridge and with this camera I have every chance to make a mistake… mistakes are a bonus for me. I get an atypical skeleton each time, on which I can build freely.
In photography it’s perhaps the easiest to be unaware (anonymous) – it takes a split second to shoot.
from „Steampunk Autochrome”
Galeria Posibilă; București, 2007
Romanian Contemporary Photography INFLUX – Looking Back to the Future
The “Looking Back to the Future” project aims to provides a bird’s eye view on the use of photography in the Romanian art scene spanning across the last three decades (and beyond). By showcasing texts, publications and exhibitions of relevancy in the this (not so) recent history, we can outline the development of this medium, highlighting the major transformations and trends that have defined the Romanian photographic expression.
This project was co-funded by the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN). It does not necessarily represent the position of the National Cultural Fund Administration and AFCN is not responsible for the content of the project or for how the project results may be used. These are entirely the responsibility of the funding beneficiary.
