hektor is part of the non-aggressive narrative, a body of work that explores memory and storytelling. His self-portraits, the foundation of this suite of prints, are a series of eleven experimental pinhole photographs circa 1999. The camera was a homemade contraption constructed out of an answering machine box – a substitute for communication when “nobody’s home.” Some of the images are double or triple exposures, while others are washed-out shots of his face. There is a deep contrast in each image, and his eyes and face are never fully realized. The original photographs were digitally scanned and can be viewed on hektor.net.

The screen erases the traces of the relatively primitive technology used to create the pinhole photographs; the texture and roughness of the originals are transformed into what seems like digitally manipulated images. Transformations and the impossibility of “the original” are integral to hektor and the non-aggressive narrative.To recapitulate texture, the images were taken down from the web, further abstracted using PhotoShop, blown up, and interpreted into patterns. The resulting ‘topological face map’ images were then printed as archival artworks onto watercolor paper.

Playing further on this iterative process, I used the original pinholes once again as my core images to run through a generative, ASCII art algorithm. The resulting texts-as-photos were remixed with pieces from the patterned series, and similarly printed on watercolor paper.