BLACK SUN
Experimental photography & circuit bending - 2023/2024
Black Sun grew out of the first experiments I made with the modified camera used to create the images for Electric Sheep. This first circuit-bent camera remains, to this day, the one I use most often.
One of its defining characteristics actually comes from an accident. While modifying the camera, one of my solder joints created a loose connection inside the device. What could have been considered a mistake to repair gradually became one of the most essential features of the tool.
When I photograph with it, I can apply pressure to a specific area of the camera to make the glitch shift and evolve in real time. The image changes rapidly: colours, shapes and distortions appear and disappear. I have to observe these variations and release the shutter when something catches my attention, fixing a state that may only exist for a fraction of a second.
There is therefore an element of unpredictability, but also a process of learning and intuition. Over time, I have learned to know this camera and understand some of its behaviours without ever being able to fully control them. I almost have to feel the moment when to release the shutter.
This relationship has become even more interesting as the camera itself has evolved. Over the years, its glitches have changed. Some effects disappear, others emerge or become more difficult to reproduce. The tool is never entirely stable: its ageing, imperfections and malfunctions continue to transform the images it is capable of producing.
It was through this experimentation that the universe of Black Sun emerged. The circular forms, originally created from the light of a simple bulb, gradually took on another dimension. They can evoke a cell observed under a microscope as much as a distant planet, a mutating organism or an unknown celestial body.
This ambiguity between the infinitely small and the infinitely large, between the biological and the technological, became central to the series. The images seem to belong to worlds that feel strangely familiar, while their scale and nature remain impossible to determine.
Works from Black Sun are notably presented as circular prints on plexiglass. This format allows the images to escape the traditional rectangular photographic frame and become objects in themselves, resembling cells, planets or fragments observed through a lens.
Black Sun marked an important shift in the way I approached glitch. I was no longer simply trying to provoke an error within a machine, but learning how to work with its instability.
I can never fully control what the camera will produce. But I can learn to listen to it, anticipate some of its behaviours, and recognise the moment when something appears.
