Light Break, Photography / Light Therapy

This book is the perfect combined synthesis between art, science and photography, the most mature and timely work of Danish contemporary artist Nicolai Howalt (b.1970) who explored, in his many experiments, the contact points between the study of light, in aesthetics and therapeutic key.

His dazzling interest in representing concretely what is solely invisible to the eyes is the basis in this series, and comes from a detailed study of the artist taken on the work of Niels Ryberg Finsen (1860 – 1904) that began using rays of light to treat skin disease, particularly lupus vulgaris (around 1890) because of its healing properties.

Nicolai decided to use the same tools used by Finsen in his experiments to represent the ability of sunlight to colour film emulsion, and distinctly display its invisible rays. He concentrated all the light possible; absorbing first the visible to penetrate infrared and ultraviolet rays only, projecting them directly onto photosensitive emulsion placed in a large format analogue camera, and obtaining for every sheet a unique and irreproducible print by mere exposure.

Finsten's methodical research is his launching pad, an archive full of historical and technical information, a large pool in which to immerse oneself for inspiration and creative analysis, making him one of the leading pioneers of “phototherapy”.

Nicolai says of his work: “it is a journey into the very origins of photography, its essence, myths and methods” and we can conclude that the light-break series is a hint towards a new form of Finsen's work, in which body and colour is exerted to therapeutic light, whose signs at one time could only be visibly tracked on the faces of treated patients.

www.nicolaihowalt.com
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