Past Paper // Present Marks: Responding to Rauschenberg

Photography by Jennifer Garza-Cuen and Odette England

Texts by Dr. Susan Bright, David Campany, and Nicholas Muellner

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In 2018, I spent a week at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency in Captiva, Florida, collaborating with Odette England on a series of nearly 200 photograms. The images were made in Rauschenberg’s swimming pool, using expired 1970s gelatin silver paper found in his darkroom. We ‘activated’ the paper by piercing or slashing the bags and envelopes using pens, scissors, or knives; folding the silver paper at odd angles; or layering them inside the bags. Some sank to the bottom of the pool, while others floated on top or by the filtration units. Exposures were made overnight and throughout the day, allowing different levels and intensities of sunlight, moonlight, and water to penetrate the paper. The resulting images do not freeze a single moment, rather, they hold collections of itinerant light in liquid motion over time. They are environmental portraits of an ephemeral past-present and a response to Rauschenberg’s legacy of tactile and experimental processes.