Enlighting Mind Alves plates

Alves plates

CONTEMPORARY LIPPMANN PLATES 

  

 

INTERFEROMETRIC PHOTOGRAPHY

Lippmann photography is a color photographic process invented by Gabriel Lippmann in 1891, based on optical interference rather than pigments or dyes. By recording standing light waves within a photosensitive emulsion backed by a reflective surface, the method captures color with exceptional accuracy and stability. When illuminated with white light, the developed plate reconstructs the original colors through diffraction and interference, producing images of remarkable fidelity. Although technically demanding and impractical for mass use, Lippmann photography remains a landmark in the scientific understanding of color and light, earning Lippmann the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1908.

 

Felipe Alves plates

In these contemporary works, the artist departs from the original use of a liquid mercury layer, instead relying on the reflective interaction between the photographic emulsion and air. This configuration generates standing light waves within the plate and, through optical interference, forms a dichroic structure that reconstructs the color of the recorded image at each pixel when illuminated under appropriate conditions.

More than a century after its invention, the Lisboa-based artist Felipe Alves has reactivated the practice of interferential color photography that brought French physicist Gabriel Lippmann the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1908. Drawing on current advances in nanotechnology, Alves works within a state-of-the-art chemical laboratory, where he refines and standardizes the plate-making process to achieve images of exceptional chromatic precision, supported by a highly professional photographic studio.

When light is fully understood and controlled by both photographer and scientist, Alves the artist gains complete expressive freedom. His originality lies in his ability to seamlessly unite téchne and poíesis, the ancient aesthetic principles of skilled making and creative generation, within a contemporary framework.

While the technical process is remarkably sophisticated, the subjects Alves chooses are classical still lifes, as demonstrated in these two remarkable plates, where fruits and vegetables are rendered with extraordinary depth, precision, and chromatic subtlety.