in summer 2009 i worked for a month at the baltic sea, 2 weeks on zingst, and 2 weeks in ummanz on rügen. i took with me an ICA volta 9x12 cm camera, built in ca. 1920, as well as a rudimentary dark room to make contact prints of the images i was developing by hand in my free shifts
as a homage to the era of photography to which the camera belongs, i used only fixed grade 4 paper and controlled the contrast of the prints with relatively low contrast negative developing as well as using multiple baths of variously diluted developer and techniques such as 'flashing' the pre exposing of the paper to light before printing
this served to give the images an authentic nostalgic aesthetic, as if they came from another time
i then took the contact prints and each day i was away, i posted a new image like a postcard with nothing but a stamp, an address and the date to my poet friend, mike haeflinger in berlin who then wrote the text on each card.
the resulting one off book is the chronological collection of the actual postcards, sewn into pages which each have a window cut out to make accessible both sides whilst fitting into the book form.
my ICA volta 9x12 cm camera from ca. 1920
