Decaying Emulsions is a project exploring memory through personal film photo archives, journals, ephemera, and various other records from the past.
A photo negative is often assumed to be a hard record of some person or event, concrete and permanent, whereas a digital photo is ephemeral until printed. Absent a print, the negative remains, images still visible. But just as a photo disk or a print decays over time, degraded by use and exposure to heat, touch, or light, so too does the negative. Film may be scratched or cut into, images may fade. The delicate emulsion will over time begin to decay.
Memory is not dissimilar. We often think of memories as stable records of an unchanging past, rather than something built over time, some details lost along the way, other bits jumbled and repurposed. Memories, like archival materials, must be maintained, and much of their value is in what they can teach us from the past, in the stories we tell about them in the present.
These are the primary concerns of this project, which grew out of my efforts beginning in 2023 to digitally archive negatives dating back to December 1996. As the project continues to develop and grow, so too will my thoughts on these ideas.
A.M. Rehagen is a writer and artist from Kansas City, whose work was featured in a number of zines and small press journals well over a decade ago. Her interest in analog photography dates back to a graphic arts class she took in high school, where she first learn how to develop negatives and print black and white photographs. After a detour into pen&ink illustration, she has returned to film photography and is slowly relearning long lost darkroom skills.
You can read some of the things she has written at amrehagen.com.
You can also view her design and social media portfolio at arehagen.com