moom bookshop

I assumed that the moon in the photograph was the sun. When I found out that it wasn't the sun but the moon, a vague picture of sunlight and moonlight together rose in my mind.

Cyanotype, invented in England in the 19th century, is a classic technique for creating images known for the beautiful blue tones produced. I decided to apply this technique that emerged in the dawn of photography, using the light of the sun to print photographs taken in the light of the moon.

As the full moon approached and nights grew brighter, I would go out to photograph, choosing places that artificial light didn't reach to set up my tripod. On it, I mounted a 6×9 medium format camera loaded with negative film, opened the shutter, and exposed the film to the moonlight for anywhere from a few dozen seconds to a few dozen minutes. Then I developed the film, scanned it, transferred the scanned images to a computer, and printed out inverted images on digital negative film. I placed the film over washi paper coated with cyanotype solution that had been left to dry, then sandwiched the film and washi paper between two glass plates and exposed it to sunlight during the day. The surface of photographic paper exposed to sunlight changes from yellow to green, then blue, gold, and finally a pale pink. When this reaction was complete, I placed the paper in water to develop the image and soaked and rinsed it out several times for half a day to remove any remaining chemicals.

What appears in the finished photographs are blue landscapes and scenes that have been bathed in moonlight and sunlight. Moonlight and sunlight share the same space. The moon and the sun-the two together-create a cycle that is synonymous with time itself. The moon rises and sets, the sun rises and sets. If this repetition constitutes time, then in photographs where the moon and the sun neither appear nor disappear, time does not exist. They are time itself, and yet timeless. They are photographs infused with time but without time.