At what point does an apple cease to be an apple?
Essentia begins with a simple question that has no definitive answer. Through the gradual transformation of a single apple, the series reflects on the instability of the boundaries through which we understand the world. Rather than opposing life and death, presence and absence, or being and non-being, the photographs reveal transformation as a continuous condition in which identity is never abruptly lost, but slowly redefined.
The work does not document decay. It observes the persistence of form through change, suggesting that what we perceive as opposites are often only different moments within the same process.
Created as unique wet plate collodion photographs on clear glass, each image exists as a singular object whose material presence becomes inseparable from the subject itself. Just as the apple changes without ever completely abandoning its identity, the photograph resists immediacy, inviting a slower encounter with both image and time.
Series information
Unique wet plate collodion positives on clear glass
25 × 25 cm
