Evolution

The Evolution series combines Constanza’s background in art history with her research in and technical knowledge of early photographic processes.
The series depicts a collection of shells in an advanced state of decay and calcification. The images recall the conventions of Early Modern Northern European still life painting through their emphasis on lighting, texture and minute detail. Like historical vanitas paintings, the photographs are nature morte allegories relating to the fragility and transience of the physical world; but the title and the images themselves suggest an ongoing cycle of decay and rebirth, and thereby the possibility of transcendence.
The photogravure print, made from oil-based bone black ink (the pigment is made of burnt bone), creates a permanent, stable, carbon-based image, echoing the process of calcification that the shells themselves have undergone.