Martin Becka is a specialist in pioneering techniques, notably Gustave Le Gray's dry waxed paper negative of 1851. This set of images comes from a commission by the Médiathèque du Patrimoine et de la Photographie: carte blanche to record the place where the incunabula of the medium have been kept since its origins.

He worked with a 20 x 25 cm camera on light laid paper negative; the positives are palladium contact prints, some mixed with other pigment processes such as gum bichromate. They are reproduced here at actual size, on papers close to the originals in colour, texture and weight, including the translucency of the negatives, which gives the volume the character of an artist's book.

Sensitive to the temporal paradoxes induced by primitive processes, always on the lookout for the fantastic that a change of viewpoint can draw out of the everyday, Becka surveys the site duly weighed down with his calotypist's equipment, which he moves tirelessly up and down the stairs, from moat to passageway, through galleries and roofs, until he finds the right subject and the right point of view.