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Negatives are Stored (signed)

by Vladyslav Krasnoshchok

Photographs: Vladyslav Krasnoshchok

Publisher: Riot Books

Pictures: 53

Year: 2014

Comments: 53 Postcards from original hand painted old cabinet and visit portrait images in a wooden box. Size of the wooden box: 12cm x 16cm. Paper: Arches 250 gr. Edition of 100 signed by the author.

"One chilly Sunday morning I was strolling through a flea market in Kharkov when I spotted vintage photos: cabinet and visit portraits, lying around on the ground covered with snow and slush flying from people’s feet. I started to buy these photos in a daring attempt to save them. Many of them had an inscription ' Negatives are stored ' or ' Negatives are stored for further orders' on the back. But collecting somebody else’s photos just for the purpose of keeping them seemed pointless. I decided to give them a new life, a new beginning… may be a life they never had. In keeping with the motto “ Negatives are stored ”, I scanned the photos in order to preserve the original image and then began altering the prints in an attempt to revive them. I colored them, erased the emulsion and applied drawings as a way to enter into their subconscious, to reach into their soul and to give them a new life. The more I worked on them, the less of the photograph remained. So “Negatives were stored ” on my computer and a new image could always be printed! I wanted to save these photos and make them alive and beautiful again. Most of these pictures are about a hundred years old. If in another hundred years someone else finds them and adds yet another layer of interpretation over mine, it will mean another lifespan for these photos and new memories of the people in them. Eternal life! Endless memories! Negatives are preserved!"

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