A R T I S T ’ S N O T E

Toward a New Kind of Image:

Photosynthegraphy

Céline Guesdon

ABSTRACT

B orn of a remarkable union, photosynthegraphy

is the fruit of a hybridization of photography and the virtual
world of the three-dimensional synthesized image. Just as Alain
tography has played with its visual
identity, but can any image take a
photographic form with impunity?
The author presents a new way
of creating images that taps into
new interrogations of images.
The link between art and tech-
nology lies at the heart of her
Renaud speaks of photologie to indicate the move to digital pho- Can one photograph a simulated research. She uses a prototype
tography, I also make use of a neologism to describe the play object? The example of the series of camera that makes it possible
between photography and synthesis to advance a possible move disconcerting cibachromes by Keith to generate a 3D mesh starting
from a single photograph. She
(thanks to data processing tools) from two to three dimen- Cottingham entitled Fictitious Por-
presents various photographic
sions. Given that today the digital element forms an integral traits (Fig. 1) and Maurice Benay- creations begun during earlier
part of photography, why could it not focus on another world oun’s installation World Skin per- studies in order to explain how
and capture a fragment of a virtual reality? haps provide a starting point for an her work leads to the perception
answer. of photography as volume-
images.
After looking at the androgynous
WHAT DO WE BELIEVE WE SEE? young men in Fig. 1, we are sur-
What relationship do we have today with the photographic im- prised to learn that they do not ac-
age? From the analogic latent image to the virtual image, pho- tually exist and are the product of
pure computer programming. Their images emerge from al-
gorithmic calculations, not from a photographic print as one
Céline Guesdon (multimedia artist), Department of Arts & Technology of the might have thought. They were in fact developed from a clay
Image, Paris University 93526, France. E-mail: <guesdon.celine@free.fr>.
Web site: <http://celine.guesdon.over-blog.com>. sculpture of the torso of the artist, which was digitally scanned
and combined with anatomical drawings and photographs of
people of different races, genders and ages. From all these dis-
Fig. 1. Keith Cottingham, Fictitious Portraits, digital print, 1993. parate elements, Cottingham created an artificial reality. The
(© Keith Cottingham. Image courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts,
New York.)
realism of these androgynous young men is born of our desire
to believe that the photographic image is capable of truth, that
it can be seen as a trace of reality.
In World Skin (Fig. 2), Maurice Benayoun invites us,
equipped with cameras, to a war zone, to circulate in a vir-
tual 3D space like a group of tourists on a “photo safari.” Each
portion of the virtual landscape photographed literally disap-

Fig. 2. Maurice Benayoun, World Skin, interactive CAVE installation

with cameras and printers, 1997. (© Maurice Benayoun)

©2006 ISAST LEONARDO, Vol. 39, No. 3, pp. 193–197, 2006 193
Fig. 3. Back of Spines, silver and digital photograph, 2002. (© Céline Guesdon)
pears from the field of vision, leaving
only its white-and-gray outline. The ob-
server has the option of preserving the
photographs on paper, like so many tro-
phies of a passage through the virtual
world, tearing off its skin along with the
photograph. Looking at these works,
which are examples of the artistic process
possible in contemporary art research, it
is in fact the photographic image itself
and the suspicions aroused by its dig-
ital manipulation that are at issue. Faced
with these changes to the shots them-
selves, must the treatment and the post-
processing therefore challenge the whole
concept of photography?
The false debate on photography is
provoked by the detractors of digital pho-
tography as a result, I believe, of a lack of
knowledge or a refusal to take account of
these changes, which are moreover the
subject of a specific 1995 work, entitled
Art/Photography: The Reinvented Image [1].
I think that this idea of reinvention
comes into its own in the area of dig-
itization: Photography reinvents itself
through the transformation of its own
technical specifications, thus leading to
what one might call a “new” theoretical
subject in the history of photography, in
194 Guesdon, Toward a New Kind of Image
the sense that very few works relating to
this subject have been published to date.
Admittedly, technical works bearing such
titles as Beginner’s Guide to Digital Photog-
raphy abound on bookshop shelves, but
it is still with reluctance that theorists de-
vote themselves to reflection on this sub-
ject. Jacques Clayssen [2] distinguishes
between two types of images: the wet im-
age (that of silver-based photography)
and the dry image (which refers to the
magnetic format on which digital pho-
tographs are stored). However, Pascal
Convert’s protean images of liquid mer-
cury present to me a more interesting
compromise. His images exhibit, to use
his words, “a Terminator effect with a
body of liquid mercury with no defined
thickness, which can take on any ap-
pearance and which can become, as the
need arises, tiling, a wall, a puddle or a
human being” [3].
Although this polymorphic character
can be both worrying and dangerous
for the credibility of photography in
the news and the media, it is a source of
great richness in the arts, allowing a cre-
ative process to take place that could not
be experienced previously in the mor-
phogenesis of the image. The multiple
changes in aspect and the malleability
of the images, which I will describe as
fluids, and the changes from body to
shape are only possible under the aegis
of digitization and its promises of hy-
bridization [4].
A DIGITAL ALCHEMY
My research springs from a desire to give
one single body to two different forms of
images: photography and 3D synthesized
images.
My method was initially like an exper-
imental graft, involving the “implanta-
tion” of shapes or computer-modeled
objects, which became in some sense pro-
longations and extensions of women’s
photographed bodies. A fantastical se-
ries came to life from this first union, giv-
ing birth to creatures with steel wings,
tentacle-like arms and spiked backs (Figs
3 and 4).
Photography in these works becomes
a sort of corrupted trap contaminated by
foreign bodies. Between the flesh and the
synthetic graft, the organic and the in-
organic have seduced each other to cause
uneasiness and to create suspicions about
what can be photographed and what can-

Fig. 4. Tentacles, silver and digital photograph, 2002. (© Céline Guesdon)
not. The ultimate stage of this process
is the printing of the images on photo-
graphic paper, which makes this digital
alchemy tangible.
THE PHOTOGRAPHIC FLESH
OF THE SYNTHESIZED IMAGE
As my research continued, the discovery
of a prototype digital camera, borrowed
from France Telecom’s research and de-
velopment department in Rennes, able
to generate a synthesized 3D mesh from
a single shot, modified and renewed the
field of 2D-3D hybridization in which I
was working. This very different process
is no longer that of a succession from
the second to the third dimension in or-
der to return to a photographical bi-
dimensionality. The input of the two
types of data is simultaneous. This cam-
era is, in my opinion, the agent of a new
way of perceiving photography: as a
volume-image. It generates a kind of vir-
tual mold in three dimensions, without
weight, floating, which one can visualize
from every angle. Starting from the pho-
tographed body, the image takes on a
body, builds itself its own individual
anatomy and becomes a synthetic skin
woven from a collection of photographs
shot from many angles.
The volume-images in Color Plate E
and Fig. 6 were created using this camera
and then produced using 3D software. Al-
though close to graphics, engraving or
photogravure, they have, nevertheless, a
photographic origin. These strange bod-
ies built with geometry and held in a
polygonally faceted net are caught in a
web of lines, weaving little by little the
network of their growth and their trans-
formation. The body is deformed, caught
by what makes it grow but can also de-
stroy it. The skin is shredded, stretched
in places and frayed as if falling off into
pieces, leaving a hollow interior.
To return to the process of creating
these pictures, the camera shot takes
place in two stages: The first photograph
is used to obtain the texture and the col-
ors. The second, for which the subject is
lit by laser scanning, forming horizontal
bands of different colors, is intended for
the calculation of the shapes. This basi-
cally hybrid camera is a way of decon-
structing the image and of infiltrating
it in order to change it. Between pho-
tography and the synthesized image, or
rather from their union, the potential im-
age of something else appears: perhaps
the quest for a third dimension to defy
the bi-dimensionality that characterizes
the image becomes possible. As so ele-
gantly put by Jean-Louis Weissberg, “The
window no longer opens on the world, it
opens in the image and sometimes inside
itself” [5]. It is this work with what I call
the “bodies of images” in a virtual scenog-
raphy (in a scenic space) that introduces
a modification into creation by means of
a very sculptural approach, as though I
were modeling or sculpting. If I make it
a point of principle that this work is a
photograph (which is clearly 2D), it is be-
cause the photograph makes tangible a
kind of ectoplasm. It is also, above all, an
aesthetic choice. To realize this experi-
mental process on photographic paper
is to make concrete what a photograph
really is, a “sensitive” paper skin, while
at the same time placing it in a porte-à-
faux, in a state of disequilibrium regard-
ing what is being seen. To start from a
photographic view and then to plunge
or travel into a world of three virtual di-
mensions and to return to a 2D “reality”
in its presentation as a photograph can
appear paradoxical. Nevertheless, it is a
choice, a viewpoint adopted to twist and
transform the potential of movement or
3D animation in order to concentrate on
the fixed image, because it retains mem-
ory of its initial volume and depth, how-
ever virtual these may be. The artistic
richness is born from this hybridization.
It leads the image toward another aes-
thetic: that of trouble and doubt. Pho-
tography would be in “trans-situation,” a
kind of enveloping membrane, an or-
ganism in its reversible transfer from 2D
to 3D, like a skin, a flesh covering the or-
ganism with a synthetic gestation that in-
vites one to bore or see through its body.
Goût(t)e (Color Plate E) is an extract
from the interactive photographic in-
stallation Ondine (which mixes photo-
graphs, synthesized images and sound)
Guesdon, Toward a New Kind of Image 195
 presented at the School of Fine Arts in
Rennes, France, in March 2004 during
the Meeting festival. The installation On-
dine explores the concept of the fluid im-
age and the linkage of the photographic
image, the synthesized image and sound
with water. It is presented in the form of
a narrow corridor about 5 m long, which
becomes narrower and narrower, instill-
ing a feeling of oppression owing to the
lack of space.
Eight photographs, each measuring
26.5 × 35.5 inches, hang from the ceil-
ing, creating a passage. There are four
on each side, quite distant from one an-
other in order to allow the visitor to nav-
igate this corridor. They are placed so
as to converge according to a perspec-
tivist axis. As soon as one enters the cor-
ridor, one can hear a mixture of fluid
sounds cued by a sensor. These sounds
change as the visitor progresses through
the passage.
Fig. 5. Corpsfilaire #1, digital photograph, 2004. (© Céline Guesdon)

Fig. 6. Image-Sisters, from the Ondine installation, digital photograph on aluminum,

26.5 × 35.5 in, 2004. (© Céline Guesdon)

196 Guesdon, Toward a New Kind of Image

 The first photograph is of a lady
stretching out her arm, showing us the
way. With this corridor, my intention was
the exploration of a body in transforma-
tion. The skin of the bodies becomes
translucent, colored with a reddening
flow, referring to hemoglobin, the fluid
that gives life to a synthetic skin. Some-
thing visceral goes to the surface and
flows through the skin. The bodies are
agitated: Drops of water are punctuating,
streaming, covering them. Are they in
front of the drops, behind the drops or
are they made of water themselves? Am-
biguity remains. The bodies are liquefied,
joined together as Siamese twins.
Seeing through the inside of the agi-
tated body, or a skin already contain-
ing the internal life on the surface of
the organism, is perhaps most affecting
for me. The body starts floating, but does
it seek to be at ease or ill at ease? What is
striking is this hesitation between the hu-
man and the nonhuman, the touch of a
doubt about the species of these bodies.
The haptic senses are aroused, the skin
awakened, as breathing wakes up a con-
tact, the touch of the glance, but beyond
that, if I wished to put this work onstage
in an installation, I would have it act di-
rectly on the moving body of the specta-
tor, to act on what is felt in the body. I
question the experiments and the body
modifications in “impossible images.” 3D
is for me a space for the extended imag-
inary of the body.
References and Notes
1. Paul Berger, Art/Photographie numérique, l’image
réinventée (Cyprès, France: School d’Aix-en-Provence,
1995).
2. Clayssen was co-organizer of the 1992 Paris exhi-
bition l’Epreuve numérique and co-founder of the Ob-
servatory of the Image in Paris.
3. Pascal Convert, “Protean Images of Liquid Mer-
cury,” Art Press, No. 251 (November 1999) pp. 39–43.
4. I refer here to Edmond Couchot, “Promises of Nu-
merical Hybridization: Prolongation and Renewal of
the Representational Arts,” in Edmond Couchot,
Digital Images: The Adventure of the Glance (Rennes,
France: University Presses, 1997) pp. 29–35.
5. J.L. Weissberg, “A New Mode of Visibility,” Cahiers
du Centre de Création Industrielle, special issue, “The
Ways of the Virtual: Data-processing Simulation and
Industrial Creation,” (1989) p. 98.
Manuscript received 23 February 2005.
Guesdon, Toward a New Kind of Image 197