The latent image. An artistic and documentary project exploring memory and the elusive images stored in the minds of reversible blind individuals.
Latent image is a concept from analog photography, referring to the image formed on the negative during the shot. Light leaves its mark, but the image remains unseen, awaiting development.
This pause embodies a profound urgency
Our project uses the latent image as a metaphor for the memories that reversible blind individuals hold within—they wait, suspended in time, driven by the longing to regain sight and reconnect with the world.
Part 1 -The world of the blinds-
In May 1998, a cruel war broke out between Ethiopia and Eritrea, ending two years later with a peace agreement. To move mechanized units in northern Ethiopia, a paved road was built connecting Addis Ababa to Mekelle and the Eritrean border. Known as Road No. 2, it spans 1,071 km and is the sole paved route to the Saint Louise Eye Clinic, where the field hospital is located.
Blind people from all over travel this road, seeking transport to arrive in time for surgery.We decided to traverse these 1,071 km by car in a 48-hour journey, photographing almost without looking, through the car windows. We called this “cinematicographies of a journey”—a photographic road movie, like a folded scroll, showing the route traveled by blind individuals.
Road to Mekelle
Road to Mekelle
Road to Mekelle
Part 2 -The intermediate world-
To approach their memories — those Latent Images — we must first encounter them.
For a few quiet hours each day, the recovery room of the eye clinic, emptied of beds and people, becomes our studio.
Patients, relatives, guides, and the blind themselves stand before the camera — a living portrait of the Tigray community.
Each face traces the outline of a society, shaping the clear identity of the place we inhabit.
Tekle Hagas
Tadelech Tsegay
Ske Heges Berha
Telish Desto
Toklu Glyesus
Woldu Alle
Mesila Welde
Mehim Goro
Gersso Kahasi
Equar Lema
Emesus Whlidan
Birhane Mulugeta
Abrehet Mehari portrait
Part 3 -The Testimonies-
Ten reversible blind people speak an hour before surgery, a day before seeing again.
Their voices search memory for the Latent Image within.
They speak of loss, hope, and the wish to see clear water, their own faces, their families.
Through them, the identity of a people emerges — and the shared longing for light.
Part 4 -The Operating Room-
A 32-minute real-time video records a cataract surgery in which a surgeon restores sight to one of our protagonists.
Filmed in a surgical theatre in Mekelle, Ethiopia, the sequence reveals the entire process — the precise gestures, the silent tension, the moment when darkness yields to light.
The operation becomes a metaphor for photographic revelation: an image slowly emerging from obscurity, until vision — and the world — come into focus.
Part 5 -The Latent Image-
A Kodak disposable camera collected from the home of one of the interviewees three weeks after regaining sight.
Its Latent Images remain undeveloped — invisible, yet alive.
After surgery, we gave each participant a disposable camera, asking them to photograph what they remembered, what they dreamed of seeing again.
Many lived in remote villages, churches, or on the move.
Fifteen cameras were given; only one was ever recovered.
The rest, perhaps kept in places of honour within their clay and straw homes, guard dozens of memories and desires — latent images that will never be revealed.