I continued my exploration of kinds of incense. This time, I used incense sticks. My original intention was to try and capture the ephemeral smoke of incense on paper, but I quickly realised that I didn't have the tools to do something like that. I followed what the material was asking me to do, and I made the incense meet the photographic paper. What happened next feels like a mystical experience. The encounter of these materials revealed something that was not visible before. I don't think is something that was IN the material, but something that manifested from our encounter.
When I lit up the incense, I express my inner thoughts, prayers, aspirations in a ritual act. While the incense was burning I fell into a state of meditation. My perception altered by something I am not yet sure what it is. When I developed the first image, I understood I was doing something magical.
The incense is consumed, its smoke dissipated. But it leaves behind traces, unique imprints. Or maybe it makes emerge something that once was. These images feel liminal, like manifestations of something unseen.
I keep thinking about Mircea Eliade’s concept of hierophany, the manifestation of the sacred.
These images feel a bit like small hierophanies. They aren’t just marks. They are residues of something deep and mysterious. The burnt lines and shapes, created from the encounter of incense, paper, light and heat seem to evoke something beyond their individual materiality.
Jung would probably interpret this as a way of projecting and giving form to things I can’t fully articulate but feel on a deeply unconscious level.
I don't think I ever felt so connected to something I made.
Yet there’s something in these images that I can’t fully take credit for. This last darkroom session before yet another departure was a gift. It reminded me that creation often isn’t about intention, it’s about discovery.
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