Behind the Silver Veil
Weronika Bela & Ivar Hagren
During 2022, Bela and Hagren have collected unopened boxes of ORWO photographic paper, which they use in the darkroom. ORWO ceased its production in 1994, hence the paper the artists use is at least 30 years old. Depending on how it has been stored, its characteristics have been affected—some images become low contrast, others are light-damaged, too bright, or too dark. The properties of the paper are effected by how the paper has been stored over three decades. Time and the memory of the material influences the appearance of the final prints, thus becoming a collaborator in the darkroom.
In October 2023, Bela and Hagren traveled to Wolfen, Germany, the city where ORWO had its production, a city that emerged in parallel with photographic innovations. Streets with names like Filmstrasse and Filmweg remind us of the invaluable breakthroughs for photography that have occurred there. They photographed local nature, an abandoned coal mine, Grube Johannes, which, after it was decommissioned, was used as a dumping ground for the film factory's emissions. Locally, the mine is known as Silbersee, The Silver Lake. The artists came across rumors that the factory released such amounts of chemicals into Silbersee that one could develop film in the lake.
In this project the artists use photography, video and graphite drawing. The interplay of these mediums raise thoughts about the properties of photography, such as the moment a picture is taken in relation to the time it takes to draw, the mechanical versus the handmade, the unpredictability of the aged photographic material in relation to conscious decisions in drawing, the precision in factory production versus the unpredictability and consequences of emissions in the area.
Weronika Bela (b. 1988) and Ivar Hagren (b. 1986) are an artist duo based in Stockholm. Hagren & Bela's work originates from the history of photography, often through microhistories of photographic materials and techniques. They primarily work with analog black-and-white photography as a medium, employing both traditional and experimental darkroom techniques. In addition to this, they utilize drawing, installation, archival material, video and text.
Ivar Hagren obtained his bachelor's degree from the Gothenburg University of Photography in 2012 and his master's degree in fine art from Konstfack in 2014. Weronika Bela earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in fine art in 2013 and 2015, respectively, also from Konstfack. Their works have been exhibited both in Sweden and internationally, including in Poland, Finland, and Greece. In 2022 they where Iaspis artist in residency grant holders in Stockholm.
They are currently developing a project on the defunct East German manufacturer ORWO, best known for affordable black-and-white photo paper, who held a monopoly over photographic darkroom material in the Eastern bloc market before ceasing operations in connection with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
IG @hagrenbela
Website www.hagrenbela.com
A Sparingly Calculated Light (Between Heaven and Earth)
This project is inspired by the history of photographer Henri Osti, who was active in Uppsala from 1860 until his death in 1914. He was primarily a portrait photographer and cityscapes but was also the creator of the first images taken with the specific purpose of being included in the international cloud atlas, commissioned by Swedish meteorologist and professor at Uppsala University, Hugo Hildebrandsson.
Within the framework of the project, Bela and Hagren have attempted to locate the glass negatives for these images but have only found paper copies. When searching through the Upplandsmuseet archives, the artists discovered an old greenhouse window, said to be constructed with Osti's old glass negatives. In the Upplandsmuseet archive, the following information is provided: "The glass window has been in a greenhouse. At the beginning of the century, it was common to wash glass plates clean and reuse the glass in greenhouses and hotbeds in botanical gardens and agriculture.
Bela and Hagren have still been unable to find Osti's glass negatives from the cloud atlas, neither in Carolina Rediviva nor Upplandsmuseet's archives, and they wonder if Osti's significant contribution to meteorology may have been washed away and sold (negatives with clouds as motifs may appear abstract and uninteresting compared to cityscapes and portraits).
In Ivar-Lo Johansson's novel "Godnatt Jord," / "Goodnight, Earth," there is a fictional character who buys used glass from a closed photography studio. The story could be inspired by the fate of Osti's glass plates.
Hagren & Bela have produced cameraless images by utilizing leaves as negatives in the darkroom, creating microscopic enlargements of the structure of plants. These abstractions of nature photography are mounted in frames, constructed in reference to hotbed windows from the early 1900s.