Médaille d'argent dans la catégorie « Visual essay »

Solar Recordings of Phone Calls with Family Members, Friends, and Scammers employs photography to register the movement of the sun across the sky. Each exposure is determined precisely by the duration of a specific phone conversation, transforming spoken words into temporal instructions for the camera. As the exposure lengthens, the film becomes overloaded by direct sunlight, producing solarisation and rendering the sun’s path as a dark, extraterrestrial streak across the frame. Every image is shaped by light and by the time of the call.

Each “recording” is grounded in indexicality, requiring the simultaneous physical presence of the sun and medium format film. These images cannot be simulated or predicted; they depend on real-time light conditions and the response of the emulsion. In this sense, the work affirms photography as a medium of direct contact rather than computation. In an era dominated by algorithmic image production, its physical origin is fundamental.

Every exposure is sustained by conversation. The ritual underpinning the project is the phone call: a durational, repeatable act that, in migration and long-distance relationships, gains particular weight. Ongoing for nearly seven years, the project evolves alongside the relationships it records.

Each photograph becomes a material trace of a specific exchange. The length of exposure permits inferences about relational intensity: brief calls, extended silences, or sustained dialogues leave distinct visual marks. Some conversations recur over time; others fade, leaving only earlier inscriptions on film. The archive thus documents both bonds and their transformations or absences.

Alongside calls with family and friends, the work deliberately includes conversations with scammers and telemarketers. These exchanges introduce communication based on extraction rather than reciprocity. Although visually indistinguishable in the resulting images, they lack relational depth. Their inclusion reflects a broader condition of contemporary communication, where voices circulate constantly yet often without care.

The resulting monochromatic archive gathers intimate exchanges, political debates, and moments of longing. Landscapes marked by dark solar traces become witnesses to unheard voices. The images hold the time devoted to sustaining bonds or confronting their erosion, reflecting on distance not only as physical separation but as an emotional and temporal condition.