The “punctum” according to Barthes is the “thing that jumps out at the viewer within a photograph” and arouses the unique experience of photography. In our age of image overloading, analog photography slows the pace in a process of restoring spirituality and mystical to the medium. The exhibition is a joint project of Beita and Punctum.
The exhibition “Parallel Strata” engages in the intermediate space between the concrete and mundane and between human desire.
The tension between real and ideal is reflected both in the medium and the subjects of the images creating a space moving between dream and reality.
Works by 41 photographers observing the here and now are on view in this exhibition.
Some document and collect moments in time and space, while others strive to create a new reality enabling us to wander into an imaginary place cloaked in magic and mystery.
The concrete act of photographing offers an interpretation of a utopian, harmonious space as well as an attempt to create a proper, heavenly world.
The images on view were all made through analog photographic methods, using film and antique 19th century techniques.
Analog photography requires time and work stages before being able to see the results, often with surprising, unpredictable outcomes.
The photographic process begins with photographic film that is exposed to light, developed with chemicals, and printed on paper in a darkroom.
The material and process are part of the motif of the creation, which slows the pace and deepens the observation.
In the digital age, so rapid and overflowing with images, photographers have begun to return to analog photography as a unique process restoring to photography its embodied spiritual and mystical dimension. The action formed through drawing with light originates in the camera obscura, the ability to fix an image on a sensitized surface or a strip of film, and capture the moment.
All of these elements intensify the value imbued in an image printed on paper and the accompanying observation, in contrast with an image backed up as a file stored in an intangible Cloud.
"Punctum" is an independent fanzine operating based on this value and entirely devoted to local analog photography.
Issued twice a year in a limited edition, the ‘zine showcases works of several selected photographers from different genres and different stages in their professional career.
Founded in January 2022, on a not-for-profit basis, its goal is the empowerment of analog photography and to provide a platform for active analog photographers.
In celebration of the fifth issue, images have been extracted from the ‘zine to take their place on the Beita Gallery walls – a step facilitating familiarization with a broad range of photographers in the analog photography community in an attempt to turn the gaze to the human need and longing for a shared, harmonious universe.