Some Recent Apparitions: Andy Mattern

January 16 – March 23, 2024

Hiding on the backs of some long-forgotten photographs are “ghost” images, faint traces of other pictures that pressed up against the surface. If left in direct contact for decades, a platinum print has the uncanny ability to make a mirror version of itself — even multiple times, without being depleted. Platinum is considered the most permanent of all photographic processes, however, it fell out of use around World War I because it was required to make explosives. This destructive ability of platinum is the same power that inadvertently creates ghost images.

Inspired that hidden photographs are out there reproducing themselves, Andy Mattern searched the backs of thousands of old pictures in antique malls, flea markets, and secondhand shops. Rather than display these found objects directly, his intention is to follow their lead to make a new kind of portrait, to reconstitute the ghosts. Mattern rephotographs and reworks the found images, coaxing the ghosts to the surface. When he feels they have arrived, he creates a new platinum print. This reanimates the cycle, breathing life back into the long-forgotten images and providing them with another chance to reproduce.

We tend to take photographs at face value, accepting them as static documents, as proof that this person existed. But how do we understand portraits that do not sit still, that jump from page to page, leaving their residue behind? What does their activity reveal? Like photography, the ghost images are magic, they are photographs made by other photographs. Andy Mattern sees them as a reminder of our flawed attempts at permanence — the things we make, however precious, inevitably take on lives of their own.