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Mark Maher
June, 2015
I completed the Meltpoint series in 2007, and it remains a favorite for me – and for many friends as well. The process is based on my roots as an analogue (chemical process based) photographer. While the series began around 2004, the ideas go much further back…
As a teenager I hitchhiked to New York City and set up a photographic darkroom in a squatted loft near the legendary punk club CBGB’s. I remember being up all night melting 35mm negatives of NYC street scenes, then printing the charred and buckling plastic strips with my street-salvaged photographic enlarger.
Flash forward almost 30 years and the Meltpoint series resulted in a well-received one-person exhibit at Amos Anderson Museum here in Helsinki, and also in a book (designed by Jesper Vuori) of the same name. Finnish publisher LIKE Kustannus wrote the following about it:
“Meltpoint is a personal exploration into the nature of things, especially the nature of love; into the seeing of another person, intensely, and with an intimacy both tender and brutal. The impetus for this finely crafted, over-sized book of experimental portraits and poetic essays came from holiday snapshots of the artist’s ex-wife, taken across Helsinki tables, in the Adriatic sunshine, and near idyllic Finnish lakes. The visual technique involves melting thin transparencies onto small painted steel plates. The six essays range from personal takes on art history and Finnish culture to explorations into what ultimately defines us. Change and human yearning emerge as the only real constants.”