In Residual Memory, Sander Martens explored his parents' photo albums, discovering previously unseen images. Like tracing letters in primary school, he traced these photographs and transformed them into cyanotypes. As the images reappeared on light-sensitive paper and were re-photographed, they became a permanent part of the artist's memory.

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Published in issue #3 2024, Invisible Threads

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Sander Martens: My parents used to mock me whenever I told them I had visited someplace in France, not realising that we had visited the same place several times during my childhood. I have always found it highly frustrating how easily the most beautiful places, people and events slip from my mind. I comfort myself with the thought that as long as I write about it or capture it in the photo, there is always a way to recover the experience. The very act of writing and photographing strengthens those fragile memory traces. Since my father's death, photos have become more valuable than ever.

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For this project, I picked up my parents’ oldest photo albums, finding pictures taken mainly by my father, none of which I had seen before. Like I used to trace letters at primary school to memorise their form, I started tracing the images, turning them into cyanotypes. Following Roland Barthes's concepts, I consider the original vintage photos unspecified points in time (the ‘studium’). At the same time, the line patterns I added represent a more personal layer (the ‘punctum’), reflecting the flow of my perception, my memory, and the ease or difficulty with which I recognise the depicted individuals. This transfer process felt like a creative collaboration, and while the images slowly reappeared on the light-sensitive paper which I photographed once again, they found a permanent place in my memory.

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About

Sander Martens (1973) specialises in black-and-white fine art and portrait photography. In 2014, he started working as a professional photographer alongside his work as a cognitive neuroscientist. Ten years later, he decided to work full-time as a photographer and visual artist. His interest in art, experimentation, and innovation is strongly reflected in his graphic images, in which control, change, and chaos are recurring themes. Using cyanotypes (an analogue technique dating from 1842), he gives chance, luck, and time an active role in his photography to arrive at layered images that exude vulnerability and resilience.

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