Light as Interference

Digital photography made through handmade lenses and optical filters, using in-camera colour replacement.
2021

I went back to the area around Nansen Street in Rostov-on-Don, remembered from earlier walks as an unruly landscape of railway tracks, overgrown banks, ruins and water. In 2021, in the heat, the same area felt flat and resistant to attention. Rather than search for a scene that would confirm my memory, I photographed the mismatch itself.

The photographs were made on a compact digital camera through handmade lenses and translucent optical filters held and turned in front of the lens. Their uneven, tinted surfaces caught sunlight and produced flare, blur, variable focus and partial occlusion; the camera’s colour-replacement mode then translated that altered light again. Each image is made through two unstable operations: a physical object interfering with the light and a camera algorithm remapping what reaches the sensor.

The sequence does not move from legibility towards abstraction. Recognition flickers. Houses, garages, trees, signs and passing bodies surface, dissolve and return as the hand, sun, filter and camera briefly align. The place remains ordinary, but the conditions of seeing it do not. What the walk could not recover as landscape is rebuilt as an unstable field of attention.

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A dark entrance in the Nansen Street area, partly obscured by a handmade optical filter.
Dark Entrance, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
Sunlight flaring through an uneven handmade filter over a roadside view.
Light as Interference, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
A bright optical effect spreading across trees and ground; the apparent pool is produced by the filter.
Light Pool, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
A fence and buildings marked by blur, flare and in-camera colour replacement.
Private Territory, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
A low house seen through uneven translucent material held before the lens.
Low House, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
Low buildings and a larger city structure occupying two scales in one altered view.
Two Scales of the City, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
Pipes and buildings in summer heat, with the upper image softened by a distorted optical filter.
Filter Flare, Pipes, Heat, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
A red-clothed figure approaching through a street scene altered by flare and colour replacement.
Red Figure Approaches, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
A red-clothed figure receding along the street through shifting blur.
Red Figure Recedes, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
A dark threshold formed by shadow and the handmade filter.
Dark Threshold, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
A street sign reading Gatchinskaya 7a within a blurred, colour-shifted view.
Address, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
Garages photographed after the street address, with light smearing across the frame.
Garages After the Address, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
The upper edge of a building and sky dissolving through the handmade optical filter.
The Sky Dissolves, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph
Faint architectural and landscape contours remaining inside a near-abstract field of light.
Contours Remain, from Light as Interference, 2021
Digital photograph