The Results of Self Analysis: Distorted Time by Eliza Lupu ‣ CVLTARTES

Bucharest-based photographer, Eliza Lupu is a talented visual artist whose images focus on the research of the human body and nature, but also on the interdependence between these two. The series is title Distorted Time and it’s Eliza’s Bachelor’s Thesis. Find out more about what she has to say about the series below.

Each image contains a personal feeling, a frozen emotion, a world once perceived in a certain way, one that I wanted to keep exactly how it is. By freezing the image, freezing the feeling/time, my conscience understands, on a metaphorical level, the fact that this world that I feel and that can’t be kept in reality, can be forever incorporated in my project. The very thing that happens when sorrow meets art, happens when I photograph and freeze something that I want kept. Art is a means to preserve experiences and to share and communicate to others, the results of this self analysis.

The first stage of my project consisted in photographing myself with certain people that inspired me. Then, after a photo selection, I printed the chosen ones-of which some were kept in their exact initial form, while others were cropped – and then I placed them in various recipients, I poured water on the surface of the photos, so that I can then freeze the images. By observing the process of cryogenics, I realized that the formations born differ, depending on the exposure time (to the low temperatures), the ice details becoming more and more clear, the longer the images were kept in the freezer, as the layer complexion developed along with the progressive transformation of water. Another stage was to intervene on the experiment, by continuing to add water as soon as the initial water layer froze, or to gently strike the ice and giving birth to new and various visual phenomena. I got invested in my experiment, enjoying this intentional triggering of visual details, intertwined with the natural unpredictability of the chemical phenomenon. And finally, the last stage in my project was to re photograph the experiment and print the results.