Series ‘Trace” is produced in alternative pigment printing processes and includes 3 layers of gum bichromate over 1 layer of cyanotype, hand painted watercolor pigments on cotton paper, printed with a single enlarged negative, exposed UV light and developed in water.

Each print is individually created with hand-coated processes. All prints are monoprints since no two are exactly alike.

(Dimension 18x24 inch matted)

“TRACE” by Dan Hermouet 

Dan’s work focuses on elements of skin as a means to reflect on memory, identity, and time. His print series “Trace” features alternative process photographs of female flesh during a brief time while her body and mind were in a transitional state between sleep and wakefulness. While experiencing a distorted state, the content of barely conscious thoughts drives the imagination of seeing and revealing tension marks on the body. The skin is embossed with a temporary memory with unnatural patterns sliding across the smooth surface of the skin, leaving ephemeral marks that attempt to capture a sense of memory through fading thus evoking the passage of time - a reminder of limitation between our identity and memory. The work defines memory through the principle of nostalgia by looking at the body the same way we look at the photo we once took - vaguely remembering or recognising the moment. 

By using an alternative photographic process and printmaking as an entry point into a memory, Dan seeks for a way to explore the 19th-century method as a legacy to create an image with an old aesthetic flavour. The process also relies heavily on the water slowly revealing a picture as time passes by.  

If all our memories were to fade away, would our identity dissolve alongside it?