Water is everywhere. Over half of our bodies, over two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, yada, yada, yada. Most of us are over it. But Hacmon, who lives in LA and was trained as an architect, has spent the last several years obsessed with it. On a molecular level, he says, it’s “nature’s most sophisticated builder.” Eager to get a better understanding of its movements and behaviors–something beyond the standard vocabulary of drips, drizzles, waves and splashes–he started looking for ways to document it that went beyond conventional photography.
Ultimately, Hacmon worked out technique involving a special type of film with a layer of liquid iron that records the movement of the water itself. The film leaves Hacmon with a full-size negative, which he then develops into pictures like the ones here–an analog process from start to finish.
He’s collected the resulting images in a series called Faces of Water,” and they’re uniformly striking. All of the photographs look like water, but no two are quite the same. In some, we see tubes and rivulets–scenes that sing with motion. Others look like glaciers frozen in time. But they also evoke other forms–gaseous celestial bodies and weird deep sea organisms.
via Wired
Image: Moses Hacmon
