Feuilles

The Feuilles cycle: pinhole photos taken during the artist’s residency at the Cairn centre d’art, Digne-les-Bains in France in 2018. Mariateresa Sartori started with a wide selection of leaves which she collected and photographed using the pinhole photography technique which exploits the principle of light and its property of reproducing images in a dark room. A simple cardboard box with a hole through which a strip of light can pass and some photosensitive paper inside it becomes the rudimentary means – an artisanal camera obscura – with which to photograph the leaves collected en plain air.

The process is purely mechanical and its results empirical: the final image depends on many variables which are impossible to control. It is the sum of everything that has happened during the lengthy exposure time: the angle of the sun changes, a cloud goes by, the intensity of the light abates, the wind moves the leaves. It is about imprints in the true sense of the word, which bear witness to the existence of things which leave, proof of what has been, mechanically faithful albeit opaque witnesses of reality.

Dire il tempo. Mariateresa Sartori