Barbara Ghidini » Alchemy

Sedimenti

il_pelle — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 10:39:26 +0000

2025 – Sediments
Chemigrams: Experimental analog photography on silver gelatin paper

Fine art photography printed on Hahnemühle cotton paper
Dimensions: 30 × 40 cm
Edition: 1/7 + 2 A.P.
Signed and numbered on verso

From the depths of the paper,

the image rises like sediment from a vanished sea.

Each stain breathes — slow, mineral, ancestral.

Between corrosion and birth,

the matter whispers its own becoming.

The series Sediments was born from the desire to listen to photographic matter in its slowest breath.

In these chemigrams, gesture withdraws to make space for reaction — for the secret dialogue between emulsion, light, and time.

The images emerge like organic remnants, geological fragments, traces of invisible processes: they do not depict, they reveal.

Color becomes earthy — brown, gold, copper — conveying a sense of return to origin, to a ground still warm with transformation.

Each surface is an alchemical site where dissolution gives birth to new forms, where accident becomes language.

Sediments is a meditation on impermanence and the memory of matter: what remains after the passage of time, what time itself leaves as a trace of life.

Part of an ongoing exploration into the autonomy of silver paper material.

Relitti Luminosi

il_pelle — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 10:41:25 +0000

2024 – Luminous Wrecks
Chemigrams: Experimental analog photography on silver gelatin paper

Fine art photography printed on Hahnemühle cotton paper
Dimensions: 30 × 40 cm
Edition: 1/7 + 2 A.P.
Signed and numbered on verso

A series of direct interventions on photosensitive paper where light and chemistry generate spontaneous forms — wrecks of images born from the dialogue between time and matter.

Each work is an alchemical sedimentation: traces of gold, red, and black emerge as remnants of a luminous metamorphosis.
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On the photosensitive paper, light and chemistry converse as opposing yet complementary forces.
By intervening directly on the surface, I allow the material to react, transform, and oxidise.
Each trace and colour is born from an unpredictable encounter — light wounds, time deposits, chemistry leaves behind fragments that seem to surface from a memory’s depth.
Gold, red, and black evoke combustion and rebirth: an inner geology where the image does not represent, but emerges.

Part of an ongoing exploration into the autonomy of silver paper material.

Vaso Alchemico

il_pelle — Tue, 28 Feb 2023 14:38:14 +0000

2023 – Alchemical Vessel
Chemigrams: Experimental analog photography on silver gelatin paper

Fine art photography printed on Hahnemühle cotton paper
Dimensions: 30 × 40 cm
Edition: 1/7 + 2 A.P.
Signed and numbered on verso

Alchemical Vessel explores the fragile balance between control and transformation, intention and accident.

Through a process of direct chemical manipulation on photosensitive surfaces, I embrace unpredictability as a generative force.

Each image is a living reaction — light, matter, and time merging into forms that evoke both the organic and the cosmic.

The “vessel” functions as a symbolic container: a site of metamorphosis where substances dissolve, recompose, and give birth to new visual states.

My work transforms photography into an alchemical act — an unpredictable dialogue between the my gesture and the autonomy of material.

Part of an ongoing exploration into the autonomy of silver paper material.