Looking For Leo
The series derives from a photograph of my great uncles Leo and Arthur taken at the German seaside in 1924. Leo and Arthur were my father’s uncles. They both disappeared in the Holocaust. Looking through the photo-album I was particularly drawn to Leo – he was always photographed smiling, always looking happy and full of joy. As I looked at the photographs I felt a deep sense of loss that I had never known him. In response to my desire to know Leo - and the impossibility of ever knowing him – I made a series of chemigram photographs.
I began by making a digital negative from the original photograph. This enabled me to work in the darkroom and use darkroom chemicals to create an intervention with the original image. I mixed some of my blood with the photographic developer so that the photographs would be printed/made with blood – creating a direct connection between myself, my past as it is perceived through the photograph, and the continuation of the family bloodline. Layers of darkroom chemicals and blood, photographic bleach, and drawing and scratching on the surface were used to simultaneously erase and reveal the original image.
Chemigrams printed with the artist’s blood, darkroom chemicals and photographic bleach, reprinted as pigment prints on Hahnemuhle Rag paper. Each print 135 x 100cm, 2021