PROCESS
Process
Flux Factory | 404A Colonels Row, Governors Island
July 27 – August 19, 2024
Gallery hours: 12-5 PM, Friday-Sunday
Opening: July 27, 12 – 6 PM
Special Event: Anthotype Workshop, August 17, 12 – 6 PM
Artists: MaLo Sutra Fish, Goran Ahlsen, Sandra Hamburg, Rafael Cuevas
Photography is first and foremost a physicist’s or chemist’s art form, if not a playground. From the understanding of emulsions’ reactions to light photosensitivity on film, from processing to printing; with all the possibilities enlargers and developers offer, photography is a scientific craftsmanship.
In the semi-darkness of a safelight where all happens, where all visions come to life, where time meets temperature to reveal, each has their own favorite tools, their procedure, their unique ways. This exhibition celebrates photographers who not only have an eye but mostly nurture the skills of the darkroom experience.
The Process of it all.
The participants MaLo Sutra Fish, Goran Ahlsen, Sandra Hambourg and Rafael Cuevas have focused on specific aspects of Governors Island and share with you their reflections on the process. What format, what camera, which chemicals, which paper could best match their artistic vision?
This show is curated by MaLo Sutra Fish in collaboration with Rachel Jun from Gowanus Darkroom and Photo LabNYC.
Gowanus Darkroom is a community darkroom located in Gowanus Brooklyn, founded by Rachel Jun. It provides photographers with the facilities needed to produce traditional darkroom photographs based on hourly rentals, monthly membership, and offers regular classes and workshops. Its goal is to help preserve the art of analog photography and provide an affordable service for students to practice and learn.
Photo Lab NYC specializes in analog photography, we offer black and white and color printing rooms, film processing and film scanning services, we also offer private and group printing classes. We pride ourselves for the mixing of our chemicals which formulas go as far back as the early twentieth century. Our client roster includes many commercial photographers and artists.
MaLo Sutra Fish is a Paris-based artist who found an amazing platform in NYC through Flux Factory, but also in Boston at AgX Collective Film Lab. This year, she is temporarily becoming a member of Gowanus Darkroom, notably to up her skills in photography with her mentor Goran Ahlsen, but also for the purpose of this exhibition, which she co-curated with Rachel Jun, founder of Gowanus Darkroom. Her love for analog photography is a family inherited thing; her godfather, her stepdad, her great grand-father and great uncle all being skillfully trained in the darkroom, as well as her mother placing cameras in her hands and her brother’s at a very early age. Yet, it is her photosensitive epilepsy that fundamentally bonded her to this medium. Embracing the surrealist school of thought of beautifying imperfections of film and its experimental approach in the darkroom, the lab became her happy place where she could reveal all the unspoken into an art form. Unapologetically enduring her films, exploiting the grain to the max, utilizing light leaks to her advantage, salvaging expired films and papers, she favors the melancholy obsession of photography and moodiness over conventional procedures. More of a visual artist, she juggles a meticulous scientific take on chemistry and physics with a purely instinctive experimental process to render images meant to target memory.
Goran Ahlsen has just retired from being a scientist in biochemistry at Columbia University for the past 18 years. He can now spend all his time diving into photography, which is a practice he started in high school. From 35mm to medium to large formats, from the processing to the enlarging, but mostly mastering homemade chemical processing, Goran is an unsung master of his craft.Having to leave his cameras on a shelf for most of his time in NYC due to lack of time and a decent lab, he finally dusted of his favorite tools when he discovered Gowanus Darkroom. Avid member and extremely generous with his practice, this is his first exhibition, and most likely not the last. His work in Biochemistry has been published worldwide. He is co-producing this show and mentoring Malo Sutra Fish at the Darkroom, where they met.
Sandra Hamburg is a NYC based visual artist and member of Gowanus Darkroom. Over the past 30 years, her work has been shown in as many renown galleries and art shows such as The Armory Show, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New Art Dealers Alliance, The Norton Museum of Art, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, The Storefront Gallery, The Knitting Factory Gallery, Gavlak Gallery to name a few, as well as published work in Vogue, The New York Times, The London Times, Harper’s Bazaar. Bound by a fascination with relationality, she creates work that reflects and engages with her environment, softening the lines that divide the self from space and merging individuality with the external world. She combines photography and sculpture to explore the dynamic relationship between action and performance, spectator and object, stasis and motion. Using an analogue 4×5 camera and produces large format prints in the darkroom using her own chemical processing. Her main focus in recent years involves the play of water and light. She is a partner at Photo Lab NYC as well as a member of Gowanus Darkroom.
Rafael Cuevas moved to New York City in 1979 in the pursuit of freedom. Once in New York Rafael found that freedom is a slippery motherfucker who keeps changing the goalpost position. Rafael saw first hand life’s worst side, cruelty, abuse and misery during his childhood years at the hand of his father. After surviving his father’s abuse, Rafael struggled to get a grip on life. Only by chance and a wink of destiny did Rafael find a safe place in a camera store that had recently opened near his house. The store owner welcomed him as a son. Rafael literally abandoned his past life and embraced photography as if his life depended on it, and looking back now, it did. The wounds created by his father have never healed. After years of emotional struggle Rafael has channeled his energy into creating images to relieve the pain and memories of his father. In his process Rafael uses exothermic chemicals of high alkalinity to create deeper and more textural images, or more simply said, images of how Rafael sees the world. Rafael Cuevas founded Photo Lab NYC in 2019 as a dedicated space for commercial photographers.
Rachel Jun started Gowanus Darkroom in 2015. She believes that all artists need a community, and that learning from others is what leads to great art. This belief was the catalyst to building a community darkroom. The darkroom started out with a group black and white darkroom and film processing area, and has since expanded to include color processing and a color darkroom.
Press Contact: meghana@fluxfactory.org