No Man’s Land
Dust leaves the earth’s imprint on everything we see. The landscape that has shaped us does not disappear when we turn our backs on it: it lingers in every speck of earth and, the moment we notice it, it sparkles once more on the horizon. To capture that landscape, the photographer cannot erase the dust that bears its trace. Nor can newly developed film be isolated from those imperfections, or the spots that appear on the prints be retouched, without losing what matters most. That speck of earth deposited on the negative, clinging to it during the washing process, is neither an excrescence nor an accident, but an element that defines the image. It draws the image out of the endless flow of circulating images and, through its slightest interference, inscribes its most precious meaning.
Osvaldo Aguirre, 2008
