Barbara Ghidini
Light into Matter
Sedimenti
2025 – Sediments
Chemigrams: Experimental analog photography on silver gelatin paper
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Relitti Luminosi
2024 – Luminous Wrecks
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.
Grafía Obscura
2020 – Grafía Obscura
Analog photograph, silver gelatin print made with a pinhole camera through the fotofinish technique.
Grafia Obscura is a visual and temporal exploration of the self through the fotofinish technique, reimagined from Paolo Gioli’s experiments.
Each image becomes a trace of motion and dissolution, where light writes and erases the body in the same gesture.
The work reflects on perception and transformation — a poetic act in which the image is no longer representation, but pure process, an unstable handwriting of existence.
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Self-Portraits _ Metamorphosis of the Negatives
2019. Self-Portraits _ Metamorphosis of the Negatives
Analog photomontage, silver salt gelatin. Taken with my camera minutera.
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“In that stillness, I wanted to involve my whole body and let myself be carried away by some movement.
The encounter with the other, I recognise their fragmentation and make it my own.”
‘Self-Portraits, Metamorphosis of the Negatives’ is a project that was born during a post-accident recovery and brings together chemical explorations carried out inside my camera minutera using some negatives of people I have photographed over the years.
It all begins by choosing a negative from the box in which they are stored, reproducing the positive and then letting things happen. Between the passages from negative to positive, I intervene with double exposure, the infiltration of light inside the camera, the deposition of silver on photographic paper, the superimposition of objects, etc.
The works I propose are based on a balance between realism and its deconstruction to reveal the darker side of life by exploring emotions such as sadness, melancholy, loss, pain, and loneliness.
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Experimental Photography
A Handbook of Techniques.
Photography has always been about experimentation, and the advent of digital imaging hasn’t stopped this creative force. Now more then ever, in fact, adepts of the craft are discovering new frontiers for reinvention.
Experimental Photography brings an insider’s eye to the cutting edge in new analogue photographic techniques, showcasing the most interesting and creative modifications for low-cost film cameras, manual printing techniques and unconventional uses of the medium.
This book guides the reader through the world of photographic special effects and manipulations, documenting techniques and approaches, experimenters and camera makers, as well as their extraordinary creations. To chronicle the scene at its broadest, it also includes a section of some of the most exciting experimental photographers out there today.
Experimental Photography is a manifesto for resisting visual homogenization.
Including artwork by Akroyd & Harvey, Wayne M. Belger, Binh Danh, Matthew Brandt, Francesco Capponi, Jno Cook, Édouard Decam, Ruth Erdt, Cesare Fabbri, Barbara Ghidini, Francisco Gómez, Paolo Gioli, James Guerin, Kwanghun Hyun, Tayo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Brana Vojnovic, Abelardo Morell and many others.