Jerry Spagnoli, from Photomicrographs, 1994-97

These photographs by US photographer Jerry Spagnoli achieve something I’m interested in with my own practice, working at the limit of representation where the original image threatens to disappear and the signal dissolves into noise. They are from a project called Photomicrographs, close ups of the grain in film negatives.

These “photomicrographs” are made from the enlargement in a microscope of a detail isolated on pre-existing photographs which were shot using a 35 mm camera (www.houkgallery.com). You can see more of them at his website here.

They are haunting images of anonymous humans who will one day dissolve away, just as their likeness dissolves in the pictures.

Jerry Spagnoli, from Photomicrographs, 1994-97

Jerry Spagnoli is a U.S. photographer whose work you probably know – he collaborated with Chuck Close on those giant Daguerrotype portraits. He is an expert in that recalcitrant process and you can see him demonstrating it here on you-tube.