Heliography Project 1827–2027
Przemek Zajfert
The search
I move through the image spaces of Google Street View, searching for moments that were never made to be seen.
A woman leaning forward. Two bodies cut off by the edge of the frame. Moments of less than a second – recorded by a machine that did not know it was recording anything.
The heliographic process
When I find such a moment, I begin a slow process. I dissolve bitumen in lavender oil, coat Zinc sheet, and expose them to sunlight. Each plate is exposed only once. There is no correction, no repetition.
The path from screenshot to plate is a sequence of losses. Between the screenshot and the plate lies the internegative – an intermediate image on transparent film, inverted, still reversible. It is the last moment at which the image could be corrected. I do not correct it. What remains is what light inscribes.
Asphalt and time
The material is asphalt – the same substance as the street on which the image was taken. The street returns to the image.
Many of these recordings no longer exist. They have been overwritten, updated, deleted. The moment has disappeared twice: in life, and in the database. What remains is the plate: fragile, unpredictable, irreproducible.
In 1827, Niépce needed days to fix light onto asphalt. Two hundred years later, I expose images made by machines and deleted by machines. The process is the same. The question is different.
Sometimes this reference leads nowhere. Then the heliograph is the last image.
Theoretical Deep Dive: Indexicality and Authorship
What does a photograph prove when the machine has already forgotten the moment? Reflections on the theoretical foundation of the project can be found in my essay “The Spectrum of the Real” on Medium.