Luther Gerlach

Fabrica

I photograph spaces that arrest me, beckoning me to explore them and take them home with me. In this series, Fabrica, I was brought to an abandoned textile factory in a small Catalonian town where I was completing an artist's residence. My friend explained that the factory was slated for renovation, to be repurposed as modern apartments. I immediately felt a sense of loss and awareness of the beauty and the ghosts inhabiting the space. Creating these images was my small way of saving the factory, archiving its history in light and shadow.

Huge broken windows flooded the interior with light – my challenge was to depict light in the shadows and shadow details in the light. Shooting directly into the light from dark rooms like this requires extreme exposure times, a fundamental challenge to the notoriously difficult, aptly named wet plate process. When the compromise between light and exposure time is successfully negotiated, the result is dense deposits of silver in the light areas, creating a paradoxically heavy sense of light. In these images the windows, or finestres, of the factory are filled with details – trees, lampposts, even the windows of other buildings are visible. The darkest corners shimmer with specks of dust, peeling paint, and broken glass reflecting the light.