01 / ORPHIC DRIFT
The work is still becoming.
These photographs were made by hand in a darkroom on the coast of Maine. Mordançage is an analogue laboratory process that transforms a silver gelatin photograph through chemistry. The surface of the image loosens, lifts and folds while a chemical formula changes the silver image into an array of blues, browns and grays, all left as a physical trace of the photographic process.
Tap a tile, then another to exchange them. Use the arrows to rotate.
02 / FRAGMENTS
Emulsion as membrane.
Mordançage turns the photographic surface unstable. The image lifts, folds, veils and breaks—then returns in another form.
Work note
The subject has disappeared. What remains is pure abstraction, made from light alone. Its color, graining and patina belong to the physical surface of the print.
03 / ARRANGEMENTS
Prints become possibilities.
04 / LUNAR CAUSTIC
The shoreline
The seafans are tiny equivalents, occupying the space between representation and abstraction. Underwater, they wave in the currents. In the rinse bath, water lifts the emulsion into its own unpredictable forms.
05 / LITTLE SEA FANS
The emulsion has a mind of its own.
Work note
On 3 × 3 inch Ilford Warmtone Glossy paper, the sea fan passes through different developers and toners, then dépouillement.
06 / ZEBRAS
The image becomes a stream.
Thirty-two branching fragments move between recognition and pattern.
Work note
The seafan becomes a matrix for the pursuit of color, chemical transformation and recombination. Released from the single circle, its branching image repeats, breaks and reforms across the field.
07 / PORTALS AND PANELS
Coming soon.
ABOUT
Susanna Pershern is an analogue photographic artist working with mordançage and modular image-making. Her practice treats photographic emulsion as a mutable membrane—something that can lift, veil, fracture, rotate and return in new configurations. Her work is held in the collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, as well as private collections. The Pursuit of Blue brings together distinct bodies of work, including Orphic Drift and the silver-gelatin prints of Lunar Caustic.
Visit orphicdrift.com