The squares that make up this image must be part of photograms I created about 30 years ago. At that time I had rudimentary equipment, and I used to wash my prints in the bath. It doesn’t do a very good job at getting rid of the chemicals, and over a long period of time the surface disimproves, it goes brown, sometimes in interesting ways. At least I thought so, when I cut up those photos and rearranged them. Rather a slow process; it can’t, for obvious reasons, be rushed.
Lavinia Greenlaw, in her wonderful book ‘Some Answers Without Questions’ describes something similar in her writing. This is from a chapter titled ‘What, when, where, why, (who)’.
’I put things in my notebooks in order to let them decay – to break down and reveal themselves.
They evolve over years and can sit in drawers for years, often incomplete and mysterious until they meet something that completes and clarifies them.
Rather like being given a key and finding the door it fits years later.’
Dave Eva Photograms 