Josh Lewis
2021Pillager
Josh Lewis
A chemical painting made towards the end of my tenure as a grunt worker in a film processing lab at a time when I was spending most of my days slacking off down in the lab's sub basement playing with raw film stock and reversal chemicals. This was a fairly disgusting space with dirt floors and four-foot ceilings from which the leaking guts of the operation above hung down, but it was open, and I could stretch out full 100' foot rolls of film from end to end on the floor. From there, I could freely apply developers, bleaches and fixers in whatever ways I could think of, usually mashing in the dust, leaves, and garbage that was kicked up in the process.
Pillager
![The Past is Past [but there is something now that I regret like I was about to do it]](https://api.mamonto.com/media/cache/w210_hA/movies/8484/5092/711e3dbdd992_6663ff98cb861.jpg)
Chorus
Josh Lewis
In any photographic process there are essentially two opposing forces at work: one, the developer, aims to turn silver salts to black; the other, the fixer, wants to dissolve those salts. Normally, these are done in sequence so as to remove any potential ugliness between the two. In Chorus, dry granular forms of both are added to the film stock simultaneously. When water is introduced, each begins a struggle for its intended conclusion. The film bears witness to the conflict, a sum of individual grains asserting and succumbing.
Chorus
An Empty Threat
Josh Lewis
Deep black blots created with drops of photographic developer, mirrored in various shapes and sizes, are sequenced into a variety of visual rhythms that add up to a sort of uneasy animation. A handmade 16mm film with an original soundtrack by Stephen Vitiello.
An Empty Threat
