Gotta Light Artists: When a Historical Process Begins to Create a New Kind of Photography

This text was written as part of the research project From Pictorialism to Post-Photography: The Functioning of Bichromate Processes in Contemporary Fine-Art Photography.

The contemporary revival of historical photographic processes is often described as a form of nostalgia for analogue photography. Cyanotype, gum bichromate, platinum-palladium printing, or wet-collodion photography are associated with slowness, manual work, chemistry, and direct contact with the photographic material. Yet an increasing number of contemporary artists use these processes for a very different reason: not to recreate the past, but to test what can be done with historical technologies today.

A particularly interesting example is Gotta Light Artists - Joanna and Patryk Fąfara. Their practice combines digital photography, computer-based image processing, their own optical system, and the nineteenth-century cyanotype process. In April 2026, the artists presented this approach during the event “Can Photography Be a Mural?” at the Pomeranian Dukes’ Castle in Szczecin, Poland. The institution described their work as operating at the intersection of digital photography and nineteenth-century photographic techniques, using a custom-built enlarger and a non-contact exposure system. [1]

After speaking directly with the artists, however, it becomes clear that the most interesting part of the project is not simply the technology. It is the change in the way a photographic process itself is understood.

Not a return to the nineteenth century

Gotta Light began with curiosity and experimentation with alternative photographic processes, but very quickly became interested in overcoming the limitations of conventional cyanotype. One of these is the relationship between the size of the negative and the size of the final image, together with the traditional requirement for contact exposure. Their custom enlarger and non-contact exposure method emerged directly from this problem.

This is a crucial distinction.

For Gotta Light, the history of the process is not a set of instructions to be faithfully preserved. It is a starting point for experimentation.

The artists explicitly state that they are not interested in reconstructing nineteenth-century photography. They combine the historical process with digital photography, computer processing and their own optical solution in order to produce images that could not have been made within the historical limitations of cyanotype.

This allows us to distinguish between two very different approaches:

reconstructing a historical process

and

developing a historical process through contemporary practice.

Gotta Light clearly belong to the second category.

A digital source, a chemical image

One of the most interesting aspects of their practice is the relationship between digital photography and cyanotype.

An image may begin as a digital photograph. It can then be processed on a computer, converted into a negative, projected optically, and finally recreated as a photographic image through light and chemistry.

The digital file is therefore not the endpoint.

It is one stage in the image’s development.

This is particularly significant in the context of post-photography. Contemporary images increasingly exist as sequences of transformations rather than as single, stable objects: a file may become a screen image, a print, a negative, a projection, a photograph, an object or an installation. Theories of post-photography have increasingly focused on this mobility of the image across different technologies, media and contexts. [4]

Gotta Light represent an especially interesting version of this process because, after passing through digital technology, the image returns to physical photographic material.

But this is not a return to an allegedly more authentic analogue state. The artists explicitly reject that interpretation. They describe the transition from digital file to cyanotype as another stage in the transformation of the image, rather than a restoration of some supposedly more “true” photographic form.

Cyanotype as one stage in the image’s journey

In a conventional description we might say: “this is a cyanotype.”

For Gotta Light, a more accurate description would be:

this is an image that becomes a cyanotype at one stage of its journey.

That is a subtle but important shift.

The historical process no longer determines the entire image-making system.

It becomes one component within it.

Digital photography and chemical photography therefore do not have to function as opposites. The artists are interested precisely in moving between different technologies and using their respective possibilities.

This is one of the most characteristic features of contemporary alternative photography: historical processes are no longer necessarily alternatives to digital technologies. They can become part of a hybrid image-making system.

Technology and art develop together

Another important feature of the Gotta Light project is the absence of a strict division between the “artistic” and the “technical”.

The artists explain that an artistic idea can lead to the development of a new technological solution, but that the reverse also happens: new technological possibilities generate new artistic ideas.

This means that their enlarger is not merely a tool.

It is part of the artistic practice itself.

The technological solution determines possible scales, spatial relationships and ways of working with the image. Technology is therefore not simply subordinate to the artwork. It becomes one of the factors that generates the artwork.

Controlled unpredictability

Technological development does not, however, produce total control.

Gotta Light can control the source image, composition, negative, projection parameters and exposure time. At the same time, they do not attempt to eliminate the influence of the emulsion, support, chemistry and working conditions.

This creates what might be called controlled unpredictability.

The artist structures the process but leaves room for the material to act.

This is particularly interesting in relation to the history of photographic practice. Pictorialism introduced manual intervention and the visible presence of the author into photography. Contemporary alternative practice can take the opposite step by deliberately allowing part of the responsibility for the final image to remain with the physical process itself.

The photograph becomes a result of a negotiation between intention and material response.

The most important change: scale

The most radical consequence of the Gotta Light system is the expansion of scale.

The artists work with cyanotype on canvas and increasingly think of it as a large-scale image. They explain that changes in scale have changed their understanding of photography as an object: it is no longer simply a photographic print but a physical image with its own scale, surface and presence in space.

This led to the question that gave its title to their presentation in Szczecin:

“Can photography be a mural?” [1]

This is not simply a question about size.

It is a question about the status of photography.

If photography can occupy an architectural surface, it is no longer simply an object placed inside architecture.

It can become part of the architecture itself.

From print to architecture

Here the Gotta Light project enters into a broader contemporary artistic context in which photography increasingly operates as material, object and installation.

Wolfgang Tillmans, for example, has long treated photography not only as an image but also as a physical object and element of spatial installation. His practice demonstrates that meaning can emerge from materiality, scale and the relationship between photographic works and their surrounding space. [5]

Gotta Light approach this issue from a different direction.

Their interest is not simply in placing photography within space.

It is in turning space itself into a possible photographic support.

If cyanotype can eventually be produced directly on an exterior wall, the photograph ceases to be an object situated in architecture.

It becomes part of architecture.

That is a qualitatively different relationship between photography and space.

The paradox of cyanotype

Even more revealing is the way Gotta Light think about the historical limitations of the cyanotype process.

Cyanotype is relatively insensitive to light and requires longer exposures than many contemporary photographic processes.

In conventional use, this is a disadvantage.

For a photographic mural, it may become an advantage.

The artists propose preparing the surface in the evening, exposing it overnight and washing the image the following morning. Their long-term goal is to work on surfaces reaching potentially hundreds of square metres.

This creates an intriguing reversal:

a characteristic that limits a process in one application can become an

advantage in another.

This is more than a technical observation.

It represents a different way of thinking about historical technology.

The aim is not to eliminate every limitation.

The aim is to discover what those limitations can become under new conditions.

From Pictorialism to Post-Photography

This is where Gotta Light becomes particularly important for the research project From Pictorialism to Post-Photography.

Pictorialists used gum bichromate and other pigment processes to move photography away from purely mechanical reproduction. Robert Demachy and other Pictorialists valued gum printing precisely because it permitted pigment, manual intervention and individual authorship. The Metropolitan Museum of Art identifies Demachy as one of the major figures in the revival of gum bichromate within artistic photography. [6]

More than a century later, the problem has changed.

Gotta Light no longer need to demonstrate that photography can be art.

Instead, they are asking:

how far can photography be pushed while still retaining a relationship with a historical photographic process?

Their answer leads from a digital image to chemistry, from negative to projection, from print to canvas, and potentially from canvas to architecture.

This is not simply technical evolution.

It is a change in the status of the image.

What makes Gotta Light post-photographic?

The most important point is not that they use digital technology.

It is the structure of their process.

The image does not possess one privileged source or one final form. It moves through different technological states. This corresponds closely to post-photographic thinking, in which the photographic image is increasingly understood through its circulation and transformation across technologies and media. [4]

Yet Gotta Light make one especially important move.

After passing through the digital world, the image returns to the physical world.

It does not end on a screen.

It ends in emulsion, light, chemistry and material.

A living historical technology

The artists repeatedly emphasize that the history of cyanotype is important to them as a context that helps them understand its limitations and possibilities. Their practice develops by identifying these limits and then attempting to move beyond them.

This suggests a useful way of thinking about historical photographic processes.

They should not be treated simply as collections of established recipes.

A historical process can be a living technology.

It can preserve its identity while its method of application changes.

It can retain its chemical logic while its optical system, scale, support and artistic function are transformed.

That is precisely what makes the Gotta Light project significant.

Beyond reconstruction

The most important lesson of Gotta Light may therefore be this:

Historical photographic processes do not have to choose between historical authenticity and contemporary relevance.

Cyanotype can remain cyanotype while being combined with digital photography, computer processing, optical projection and monumental scale.

An image can begin as a digital file.

It can become a negative.

It can be enlarged through projected light.

It can be chemically recreated.

It can be printed on canvas.

And eventually, perhaps, it can become part of a building.

The project therefore demonstrates something fundamental about the contemporary afterlife of historical photographic processes:

a historical technique does not become irrelevant when it ceases to be a dominant technology. It can acquire a new life precisely when its original limitations are treated as material for invention.

This is why the question “Can photography be a mural?” is so compelling.

It is not really asking whether cyanotype can become large.

It is asking how far photography can move beyond the traditional print while remaining recognizably photographic.

And that is exactly where the history of photography begins to meet post-photography.

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Notes

[1] Zamek Książąt Pomorskich w Szczecinie, Rozmowy poza kadrem: Czy fotografia może być muralem?, 20 April 2026. The event introduced Joanna and Patryk Fąfara / Gotta Light Artists and described their combination of digital photography, nineteenth-century photographic processes, custom-built enlargement and non-contact exposure.

[2] The Museum of Modern Art, Cyanotype. Historical information concerning John Herschel’s invention of the process in 1842.

[3] Victoria and Albert Museum, materials on photographic processes, including the history of cyanotype and Anna Atkins.

[4] Camila Moreiras, “Joan Fontcuberta: post-photography and the spectral image of saturation,” Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 18(1), 2017.

[5] Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, materials on Wolfgang Tillmans and his treatment of photography as material, object and spatial installation.

[6] The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Demachy, Struggle, and Lisa Hostetler, “International Pictorialism,” Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.

Primary source

Joanna and Patryk Fąfara / Gotta Light Artists, responses to questions submitted as part of the research project From Pictorialism to Post-Photography: The Functioning of Bichromate Processes in Contemporary Fine-Art Photography. Their responses address the origins of the project, non-contact exposure, the custom enlarger, the relationship between digital photography and cyanotype, materiality, scale, collaborative authorship and the planned photographic mural.

Methodological note: Statements concerning the technical process and future plans are based on the artists’ own accounts. The connections drawn between their practice, Pictorialism, alternative photography and post-photography are my own research interpretation within the framework of the project.