amor fati
amor fati is a project involved in exploring the concept of death through use of photography. Through use of the triptych form, one sees a progression from whole to damage to repaired. Of course, the repair never fully restores—likewise, in that final step, the image shifts from analogue to digital and creates something from nothing as well as changes from figurative to something more abstract.
The images are shot on a 4×5 camera, a format which typically demands precision and lacks spontaneity, and then the negatives are disastrously abused through cutting, scoring, punched holes, and/or crumpling. In this way, the ‘master record’ from which countless copies are made, is irrevocably changed. But even from the beginning there is no preciousness going on with the materials: one can often see dust, water marks, moiré, chipped edges, etc. We may be conceived in darkness and birthed in light, but from that very moment we must fend for ourselves against the effects of the world.
“Summer after summer has ended,
balm after violence:
it does me no good
to be good to me now;
violence has changed me.”
-Louise Glück, “October”