By Pauline Joelle,

Bleached 2014, Karalla crosses the sacred ground of the holy film negatives, by tossing out the white gloves and splashing the delicate filmstrips with bleach. Karalla can’t help smirking when hardcore photographers start asking her how she created this work, and they instantly interject that she must be doing this to a copy of the negative? She nods NO and states, “It is the original”

 

In Karalla’s words;

The negative is my beginning, to bleach, bend, cut, scrap, throw the negatives in a drawer or leave them out on any dusty surface, anything to let it collect life. Rebuilding the image is where I lose myself in time. I start with the most hopeless images, because there is nothing to lose. Hours mesh into days, there is an alchemy of magic that comes into play. Editing the aftermath, being a one person operation, I restart the play again with my cameras, to create a distance and procrastinate from the process of editing. After a 5 to 6 month period I can return to the previous project with fresh eyes, and edit the images, this process helps me to see what I could not see before. Because before there was a premeditated idea of what I wanted instead of what beauty was there.

My process was once a passion, now it is my addiction.

 

Available in Platinum, Silver prints, Encaustic prints and the Instant Gratification Digital Prints