fragments

"The image is peremptory, it always has the last word."

R. Barthes, 1978. A Lover's Discourse

In this photograph, reduced to strictly black and white tones, every black pixel has been manually replaced by one letter in the phrase L E D E R N I E R M O T , spelling out ‘the last word’ over and over. The image is composed of 991,469 keystrokes (in comparison Moby Dick has 1,045,585). 

This image is a reference to the nuclear shadows of bodies exposed to radiations during the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. At the moment of the explosion, the radiations bleached everything they hit; anything that got in their way (objects or bodies), acted as a shield, protecting the surface beneath it. Those images, printed on the walls or the ground, became the last remains of the victims.

• 2013, May 17 - 20 Schloss Leuk-Dorf, Switzerland, FORUM WALLIS VII Festival