Impermanent Shadows (Lumen)- Book Series

Single edition light sensitive handmade book

Lumen prints and natural dye ink
10.6 x 13.4 x 2.8 cm, 13 pages
2021

The lumen book is another development of the original lumen prints. I applied book as the medium due to the authenticity of touch. It is the first piece for Impermanent Shadows Book Series. This book series works with the concept of durational images- the images as the performers that are unfixed, dynamic and constantly growing, made by applying different photosensitive materials and cameraless photography.

 

The first book Impermanent Shadows (Lumen) works with the concept that all the images and texts are gradually fading and changing over time, since the book pages are the unfixed lumen prints on photo paper themselves, and the texts are written with self made light sensitive natural dye ink. Thus, both the images of the pages and the handwritten texts here are fading with light participation and time passing, and also while the readers are reading the book on their hands.

You can read the texts here:

'Notice to the Reader
The images of the traces in this book are the sun-pictures by exposing plants on photographic paper. They are fading with time passing, and also while you are reading them, because the paper is still sensitive to light- they have never been fixed by the chemistry. So is the ink for writing the texts here.
 
If you want something to be immortal, it would never be the same.
24 Feb 2020

The blue and the violet lights are very lost on their long ways travelling to us during the sunset, that is why I saw the lumen lost its blue-violet tone and became quite pink, magenta and purple. I thought it was fading and wondered why it faded so fast and strange in a way that did not use to be, but I was wrong. The materials reflecting the blue and the violet are still there in the paper, just the lights which make us be able to see the colours didn't reach us. It does not mean something is not there when we cannot see them, they exist stunningly without being seen.
6 May 2021'