Catalèptic

Cataleptic is a photographic series that explores the fragile threshold between rejection and absence—between what we choose to discard and what is no longer there. Created on dry plates, the work considers how images can hold together presence and disappearance, revealing not only what remains but also what has already slipped from view.

The series begins with discarded objects, removed from their original function and displaced from the logic of waste. Through acts of selection, arrangement, and transformation, these fragments are reconfigured into fragile constellations where familiar materials become strangely unfamiliar. Rather than recovering what has been lost, the work allows these objects to exist in a suspended state, resisting both usefulness and oblivion.

The choice of gelatin silver photographic plates is inseparable from this process. Their physical weight, subtle luminosity, and tactile surface slow the act of looking, allowing each image to exist simultaneously as photograph and object. Rather than acting as transparent images of reality, the plates assert their own material presence, making the photograph itself a space where memory, matter, and time converge.

Throughout Cataleptic, silence is not the absence of meaning but the condition that allows it to emerge. The photographs resist explanation, inviting sustained attention rather than immediate recognition. Between presence and absence, beauty and decay, they occupy a state of suspension in which nothing is fully resolved. Like the condition from which the project takes its name, the images remain suspended: never fully present, never entirely absent.