Breathing Photography: Prosthetic Encounters in Research-Creation

In this article, I write performatively about an artistic practice known as carbon photo printing as a prosthetic space where embodied encounters of images, memory, personal reflection, poetic refrains, materials, creation, and research are brought together in contiguous relation. Drawing primarily from Charles Garoian’s theory of art and research prosthesis and from Brian Massumi’s theories of semblance and research-creation, I describe processes of carbon printmaking from the initial stages of digital negative creation to the final stages of photographic development in an effort to frame research as co-existent and co-emerging within a field of relations rather than as an external practice applied to a context. I conclude the article with a discussion of research as reconceived as a prosthetic encounter by drawing upon the concept of research-creation and its emphasis on expanded perception, experimentation, relationality, and transduction.