Lucas Leffler

Implosion is part of the APS project developed within the framework of the Picto Lab residency of which the Belgian artist is the winner in 2022. This work is very different plastically from the first project (Zilverbeek) but it is part of the same experimental research of the photographic process through the telling of a documented story about the turn of the year 2000 which saw the transition between the silver and digital industries.

With Implosion, the Belgian artist focuses on the year 2007, which saw the destruction in July of the Kodak factories in Rochester, New York, and in January, six months earlier, the launch of the first iPhone by Apple. The smartphone that has recorded the most images to date is the icon of the digital turn in photography. The works in this series are all unique. The first one was presented in November 2022 at the Paris exhibition. It is an assembly of 140 used iPhones of the first generations, marketed by Apple. An image of the collapse of the Kodak factory in Rochester is reproduced on the 140 screens by wet collodion photo-sensitive emulsion and direct printing. Lucas Leffler reveals a traumatic image for the silver industry (implosion of the Kodak factory) on the screens of the iPhone, which is one of the main reasons for the near disappearance of silver photography today. The artist transforms the iPhone into an inert medium and allows Kodak to take its revenge on Apple.