22 × 28 cm 184 pages 1000 copies Softcover with Cloth Dustjacket ISBN 978-618-5479-51-0
“Over time, I found myself drawn to photographic materials that were already unstable, worn, or exhausted. Rather than resisting their imperfections, I learned to work with them. Somehow, I began to trust these damaged materials more than perfect ones. They seemed to carry time in a way that untouched surfaces could not.” -Vic Bakin
The starting point for ‘Materia’ was a pair of portraits of the same man, taken by the artist ten years apart (2014–2024). These portraits revealed not only what had changed, but also what had strangely remained the same. Within each portrait, the accumulation of time became more visible than the passage of time itself.
Around the same period, Bakin started printing on outdated Ukrainian photographic paper from the 1960s to the 2000s, each pack preserved in different conditions. Some sheets had faded, others carried mold, traces of fingerprints, or almost no contrast. Parallels emerged between these worn photographic surfaces and the vulnerability of the body and its skin in the portraits.
