Santiago Martínez
To Fold
“To Fold” is a study of the fundamental elements of the photographic medium: light and a photosensitive surface.
By folding darkroom photographic paper before exposing it, the resulting images are the projection of the surface itself. In a way, they can be seen as self-portraits.
Each exposure is made by the flash of a camera that captures the process. Three different series of images are presented: “You can’t fold a piece of paper more than seven times”, “Paper airplanes”, and “Various failures”.
Each series follows a different protocol where the same action is repeated, but the final result is never the same and cannot be controlled or replicated.
Santiago Martínez (Cali, Colombia)
He is an artist and photographer based in Lausanne, Switzerland. He first got into photography growing up within the BMX community to immortalize those moments of fun.
Today, his work investigates the characteristics of the photographic medium itself. Working with different techniques and tools such as cameras he builds himself, scanners, various printers, and darkroom techniques, he often takes images through multiple stages of reproduction and transformation.
His work explores, with a playful approach, the processes leading to autonomous images, using errors and accidents as a creative engine. His images invite the viewer to reflect on how an image is created rather than what it figuratively represents.
