Re: Touch, the Arithmetics of Distance
About five years ago, while moving studios, some experimental tests of ink on film were filed, then forgotten in the shuffle. This February 2020, I found them in a manilla envelope and, curious to see them for the first time, sent them to be scanned. By mid-March, the covid-19 pandemic was, in devastating proportions, beginning to throttle NYC, preceded by Wuhan, China, Italy, and others. I got the scans back on March 15, a day after all NYC schools were closed by Governor Cuomo, and just as alarming numbers of sick and dying began to roll in. I did not intentionally set out to make these images, so part of my fascination with this project has been with the strange alchemy of creativity itself. How something you begin five years prior, can sit patiently, like a seed, until the right moment. I am using antique-photo “re-touching” inks and analog slides. These inks are traditionally used to erase the flaws that occur in analog photography, in order to touch up and produce a perfect print. Here they are used in reverse - where the ink functions as a stain or a blotch. The process of dropping ink from a dropper onto these slides is not unlike testing for pathogens on treated medical slides. Put in place across the globe, social distancing has meant that we now cherish and ache for human touch more than ever. These images echo back, with uncanny prescience, this brave new world.
Amanda Marchand is a Canadian-born, Brooklyn-based photographer. Her work explores our mortal planet and experiments with the medium of photography. Honors include, shortlist Bartur Photo Award 2020; “3rd place series” LensCulture Art Photography Awards 2019; "Honorable Mention" FRESH 2019, Klompching Gallery; " 2nd Place, Curator’s Choice” CENTER's Choice Awards 2015, "Honorable Mention" Center Forward 2015 – CFAP; the Graduate Fellowship Award, 2001 - SFAI. Marchand has completed many residencies: the Studios at Mass MoCA, the MacDowell Colony, Headlands Center for the Arts, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Datz Museum Residency, and Hewnoaks Artist Colony, among others. Along with having produced multiple artist books, her monograph "Nothing Will Ever be the Same Again" was published 2019 and “Night Garden” 2015, by Datz Press. Marchand's photographs have been exhibited internationally in solo and group shows and she is represented by Traywick Contemporary, CA. She is author of the book of fiction, “Without cease the earth faintly trembles,” (DC Books).
Website: https://www.amandamarchand.com/re-touch