16/01/2026
Get • Today I’d like to share the works from Chapter 2 — Mirror on the Table from my ongoing exhibition "Stjernhimmeln" at
N.11 - Sunflower
This work is rooted in August Strindberg’s alchemical text "Le grand Soleil" and his phrase: “Gold is nothing less than sunlight photographically fixed.”
Inspired by this idea, and by the Japanese marbling technique Suminagashi, I began to think of photography as a space where nature (in chemical reaction) itself could act — through light, and chance. This approach is also an homage to Strindberg’s prophetic text "The New Arts! or The Role of Chance in Artistic Creation", published in 1894.
During my research travels in 2022, I photographed the sun in each city I visited. Instead of developing these images in the usual way, I transformed their material: the silver bromide in the film was melted down into liquid silver, leaving the image of the sun latent — present, but unseen. Onto this invisible foundation, I applied Tollens’ reagent, allowing silver to form its own mirrored patterns on the surface of thickened water. These reactions were then transferred onto photographic paper and developed using a Chromoskedasic Sabattier process, producing unstable metallic tones shaped by UV light and by the freshness of the developer.
The works remain unfixed. Oxidation continues during the exhibition — black spots appear, colors slowly shift. The photograph never settles into a final state. Here, the image becomes nature itself.
This work also became the conceptual and material starting point for my offset plate experiments developed in 2025 for Les Cahiers du Collège International de Photographie n° 01 with , under the title "Haloheliogramme". Using seawater from Landskrona, soot, albuminated tissue paper, and a silver reaction derived from an undeveloped solar negative, the process brings together the two fundamental elements of photography — salt and silver.
suminagashi collegeinternationaldephotographie hideyukiishibashi
