
Relaxing Chamber
- Publisher
- Dienacht Publishing
- Year
- 2022
- ISBN
- 978-3-946099-35-2
- Specifications
- Hard velvet cover with embossed photo
Black book edges
Duotone printing (two blacks)
Foil stamping on the spine
20 × 28 cm
172 pages
Book in a three-quarter printed slipcase
Text by Dr. Christian Tudorache (Leiden University)
Edition of 500
Bronze Medal, German Photobook Award
A continuously developing series of photographs about consciousness in humans and animals. Human faces and animal forms, often not immediately recognisable — claws and tentacles, crocodile eyes and insects — emerge from a black void alongside people who seem asleep, ecstatic or in a trance. The project circles around the human psyche, the archetypal symbolism of animals in collective unconscious memory, and altered states such as euphoria, isolation and dissociation. A "relaxing chamber" is a humid container used to soften dead insects before pinning. A text by Dr. Christian Tudorache traces the evolution of ideas about consciousness back to Aristotle. A special edition object with a pinned print in a hand-crafted reclaimed-wood frame exists.