between wash cycles
photographic material study / analogue process
The premise
Modern domestic labour inextricably binds care and brutality into a single endless loop. This work is a material investigation into the weight of maintaining an inherited archive until it fractures under the pressure of its own preservation.
The mechanism
A continous photographic print - executed across an entire ream of large-scale photographic paper - is systematically sectioned and subjected to the aggressive cycle of a domestic washing machine using hot water and bleach. The process mirrors the extreme act of domestic maintenance, deploying punishing physical labour to simply manifest care.
the output
The chemical erosion strips away the stability of the emulsion, transforming the original image into a bruised and weathered artifact. The archive is rendered not as a passive record, but as a physical remnant of a system where the attempt to save something nearly destroys it.