ISLAMABAD: Argentinian Ambassador Ivan Ivanissevich hosted a photography exhibition featuring the work of his daughter Eugenia Ivanissevich, a renowned photographer currently lecturing at the University of Bournemouth.

The exhibition, titled Con Sol. Con Agua (With Sun, With Water), was made in London, Ambassador Ivanissevich said.

“In the city of London, people take water for granted, but there are countries like Pakistan where water is very scarce. In the photographs you can see that many of the glasses are empty, they speak of people who have empty glasses.”

He said: “My daughter sent me a photograph she had taken of some glasses and I immediately asked her to do a project about water for Pakistan. This was a few months and then she produced all these. Some of the colours, the bright red, and some of the small decorations, or motifs, on some of the glasses remind me of embroidery in Pakistan.”

In the images glasses of varying shapes, shades, sizes and colours, sit empty, barely filled or half poured with water, with light resonating of and through them. The play of reflections and shadow is captured with unusual techniques and paper. The singular content coupled with the diversity of method and process emphasize the central role water and light play in life.

Ms Ivanissevich explained: “The prints are not made using a camera, they have been made using photosensitive paper.”

The chromogenic digital prints were made on Kodak metallic paper through a process that exposes LED through a digital negative onto a light sensitive paper in the dark. The prints were then chemically machine processed following traditional photographic developing processes.

The photograms were made by shining light onto objects placed on top of light sensitive paper. The light cast a shadow of the object, which was then captured by the photographic paper. Darkroom processing created a ‘negative’ image of the object much like an x-ray.

These photograms, which were inverted or mirror images of the original, were used to make a most unusual a series of black and white positive prints. Handprinted by the artist, no two prints were exactly alike. The use of thick matte textured paper made of cotton rag gave the photographs an etching or charcoal drawing effect.

“The concept arose as a conversation between my father and myself. I live in London where there is rarely any sun. In Pakistan you are blessed with sunlight. We had gone through two weeks of clouds and rain and suddenly the sun came out. I am a keen observer of my kitchen area and I picked up on the shadows made by the glasses on the kitchen. I photographed them and I showed them to my father who said we should show images like this in Pakistan because they are empty glasses and there is lack of water.

“The fact that they are everyday glasses that everyone can relate to brings awareness. I agreed and then started to explore the idea of the empty glass using different techniques. The subject of water is very different here from UK but there is a global scale urgency around water,” Ms Ivanissevich explained.

The assortment of glasses came from within her home, but she said: “The selection was deliberate. I love colour and the sunlight transforms these glasses. With sun, we create the image, because on their own the glasses are just drinking vessels but with the sunlight they become something else. It reminds me of stained-glass windows and that these notions were in mind as I grouped the vessels together.”

“What I find most interesting in these photographs is the contemporary style and the transparencies. The technique of developing the positive from the negative is also unusual, while maintaining the impact of light. The effect is like printmaking more than photography,” Farrah Mahmood said.

Published in Dawn, May 29th, 2019