Triggered: Tomo Morisawa

© Tomo Morisawa. “Untitled”, from Silver Gelatine, Water. 2017.

By Tomo Morisawa

The work is a part of the mini series silver gelatine, water, which was published as a zine from Dashwood Books in 2017. It is a photograph of a silver gelatine print of another photograph, being washed in the washer. Around this time, I was thinking a lot about the relationship that photography has had with water. 

For almost the entire history of the medium, water was an indispensable element in the photographic process, from developing negatives to making a print in the darkroom. As we all know, however, this has all changed with the shift to digital imaging. We tend to think of the difference between analog and digital photography in terms of the latter’s mellabity in the digital space; but what if we shifted our perspective a little, and tried to understand the analog - digital difference in terms of their relationship to water? As much as it is indispensable to the analog process, the water in the digital space destroys everything by frying the electronics. The digital sensor cannot withstand even a splash, and no one in the right mind would think of washing a pigment print in the washer. 

Those thoughts were the general context in which I made this picture. But there was another, more visceral reason too. I find the image of a silver gelatine print being washed in the water extremely beautiful. It moved me to press the shutter. 

You can see more of Tomo’s work here.