Gael del Río and Luca Bani: Exposures
A book by Gael del Río and Luca Bani, “Oddments” reflects on the leftovers of darkroom processes, and the implicit decisions embedded in test strips, image fragments often considered meaningless.
When photographers print in the darkroom, they begin by testing exposure times under the enlarger, selecting small portions of the frame to create test strips. The artist duo Gael del Río and Luca Bani began to see these discarded fragments not as waste, but as raw material. Cropped to the point of abstraction, the strips shed their original context and began to take on new meaning through sequencing and juxtaposition.
The viewer’s eye follows a rhythm of lines, textures, and contrasts across these fragments once part of “a joint, a chest, a dune, skin, an abyss.” Meaning shifts from literal to suggestive; it’s not about what the images show, but what they spark.
The book “Oddments” is published by Ediciones Posibles and available at the price of 50 Euro.
