Alex Hedison

 A BRIEF INFINITY / 2022

In 2020, with the isolation brought on by COVID-19, Hedison’s practice was interrupted. No longer able to travel to shoot, she began to improvise in the dark room: 

“Traditionally, a photograph is a captured impression of an event printed from a negative. But I had no negatives to print from, as I had taken no photographs. So this series of work was made in the opposite order. 

I started experimenting with chemigrams; unlike traditional photography, chemigrams require nothing more than the interaction of chemicals and light on photographic paper. As I played with this process, I discovered that when black and white photo paper is given prolonged exposure to light, miraculous colors appear; bright hues alchemized, from pale pink to darker ruddy tones. Using clear packing tape, metallic paint, and varnish as forms of resistance, I began protecting the surface of the paper before submerging it into its chemical wash.

I chose to photograph the chemigrams one instant to the next, making records in an abstract and shifting landscape. My intention paralleled what I consistently aim to do with my work: to chronicle the fleeting process of development. Each moment I photographed is a record of a transformation underway, a split second in a state of flux brought interview within a single frame.

I printed the images adding the silver metallic paint initially meant to block the chemical process from occurring. I use the same reflective material and painted directly onto the final photographic prints. My work is drawn from the in between, the unfolding experience between the knowable and uncertain, it is as brief as it is infinite.”