My discovery that exposed and developed sheets of color photo paper could be used to translate a series of physical marks led to this series of rubbings. The chemically developed black photograph is a literal “picture” of white light; a camera-less photograph. From there, what started as ‘photographic’ cedes to the tools of an older form of printmaking. Instead of optics there is a stone. Instead of a taxonomy of “subjects” there are objects: a labyrinth, a leaded window, a double-headed axe. My hand directs and angles the stone over the paper, using pressures from light to forceful, and the objects hidden underneath the paper begin to reveal themselves. If I move the paper around more decisions have to be made. I imagine stroboscopic mappings of my nerves and synapses, or strange nocturnal landscapes viewed from the air, or perhaps an unfamiliar set of constellations. What shape to scratch, where to put it and when to stop? Shapes and occasional colors advance and recede, sometimes just a hint of the object under the paper, sometimes the object multiplies into complex patterns.

Each rubbed image starts as a circle, and in some way, ends as a circle. There is a “print,” the physical rubbing, on top of a print, the photograph. One picks up where the other leaves off; there is no discernable end.