The exhibition “The Silent Forms” presents the early stages of a photographic research that unfolded in two phases. It began with a twenty-eight-day walk through the Moroccan desert (as part of the KAFILA residency with the IFM, 2023), followed by several months of experimental work in a black-and-white photography lab.
For this process, I deliberately sought to move away from traditional photography and explore experimental techniques inspired by both artistic and scientific approaches (enlargement, transfer, contact printing, solarization, embossing, etc.). These methods felt relevant to grasp the ever-shifting nature of the living.
Alongside my camera, I brought tracing paper and carbon paper, which I used to transfer surfaces, forms, silhouettes, and textures—now gathered under the series titled Transfers. Through repetitive gestures, I wove a physical connection with the landscapes crossed. Over time, I realized that this roll of paper acted like a film reel, recording gestures, embodying duration. In this sense, I was able to photograph without a camera.
I also collected organic materials whose transparency allowed me, back in the lab, to observe their delicate details. Using enlargement processes, unexpected forms and geometries appeared, as seen in the diptych The Twin Columns. I also brought back stones, witnesses of natural phenomena, which I explored in terms of volume. An embossing process allowed the photosensitive paper to absorb their contours. Once exposed to light, mysterious reliefs emerged against desert backdrops: I call these works Prominences.
The Silent Forms echoes my reflections on the transformation of living matter through time, and the memories it carries or reflects. Through photographic gesture, I attempt to familiarize myself with landscape elements, by appropriating them through the medium. In the lab, the play between chemistry, light, paper, and gesture produced unexpected outcomes, offering new insights into the materiality of the medium.
I feel this phase of research is now taking shape, and that all these experiments are interconnected through the notion of transfer. By transfer, I mean the way gathered, recorded, and photographed elements gradually transformed—from mineral and organic matter, from landscape to paper, from desert to exhibition space. This exhibition perhaps speaks of a material displacement.
Houda KABBAJ
