デジタルではなく、銀塩（フィルム）で撮影し、印画紙に焼きつける。光がフィルムの乳剤に触れ、薬品のなかで像が立ち上がる——その一連の過程は、ただ記録する手段であることを超えて、対象と向き合う時間そのものになる。
銀塩写真の階調は、粒子のひとつひとつが積み重なって生まれる。なめらかな諧調も、深い陰影も、目の前にあったはずの光を、確かにそこにあったものとして留めていく。すぐに結果の見えるデジタルとは異なり、現像を経てはじめて像と再会するこの遅さが、撮ることへの態度を静かに変えていく。
消えてしまう雪景、偲ばれる面影——いずれ失われていくものを記録しようとするとき、銀塩という手間のかかる方法そのものが、対象へのまなざしと響き合う。ここに、そうして重ねてきた記録を並べていく。
The World of Silver Gelatin Photography
Shot on film rather than digital, and printed onto gelatin silver paper. Light meets the emulsion, and the image rises up through chemistry—a process that is more than a means of recording. It becomes the very time spent facing the subject.
The tonality of silver gelatin photography is born of countless grains layered one upon another. Its smooth gradations and deep shadows hold onto the light that once stood before the lens, keeping it as proof that it was, in fact, there. Unlike digital, where the result appears at once, here the image is met again only after development—and that slowness quietly changes one’s attitude toward the act of photographing.
Snow that melts away, a face remembered in absence—when the subject is something destined to be lost, the slow and laborious nature of analog photography resonates with the way one looks at it. This is where those accumulated records are gathered together.