The never ending happening
Of what’s to be and what has been
Just to be a part of it
Is astonishing to me
Bill Fay, The never ending happening
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So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Roger Waters, Time
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Historical photographs (c. 1880) of ancient buildings and of nature are marked with a scorched trace. In each case, this ‘scar’ was created with a heliograph, a meteorological instrument that registers solar intensity through ‘burning’ a piece of paper. A model of it was built especially for this project.

The process was carried out at the exact site where the photographs were taken, in order to record the "same sun" once again. The project hence required trips to Greece and Egypt. The final stage will include as well Italy (Rome, Pompei).

Is it not, after all, the same sun that shines upon us today that lit the men who built ancient temples and who took early photographs in the 19th century? If we shift to a ‘natural’ temporality, the length of time that separates us from the architects of the Parthenon suddenly seems insignificant. The burn marks left by the sun on the photograph is what links these moments; this link between different eras, between the past and the present, allows us to shrink – or even to temporarily and mentally elide – the distance that separates us from the past. In this way, we can borrow and rework the famous assertion of the Ecclesiastes: there is nothing old under the sun.

Original prints 1880 -1927, solar burns, wooden frame, non-reflective glass
37 x 49 cm and 28 x 41 cm
Unique editions