I Was Looking for a Ghost and I Found Its Silver Bones

面影, omokage

(n.) from japanese:

looks, vestiges, a trace of something or someone that remains even after they have disappeared or passed away. A reflection or reminder of the past.

面;

mask, face, features, surface.

影;

shadow, silhouette, phantom.

Photographs marked by silver damage and images of abandoned shrines, of landscapes where the sacred lingers, skeletal ruins, houses caught in limbo: this series is my attempt to capture the ghosts and spirits of the Japanese landscape, following the concept of kamikakushi (or the disappearance by spirits) which was my research focus during my residency at Koganecho Art Center in Yokohama (2024), and is, to this day, my main field of research.

These spaces, though often overlooked, resonate with invisible presences and layered stories. They stand as portals between the visible and the invisible, between function and afterlife, between visibility and disappearance: as if their former occupants vanished overnight, they remain intact, silent witnesses of interrupted lives.

With I was looking for a ghost and I found its silver bones, a poetic interpretation of being spirited away, I seek to impose a contemplation of images that will, in one way or another, be taken away by the phantom of light and time.

The archival portraits exist in the unstable space between presence and absence: between the latent and the revealed, the spectral and the material. Sourced from various flea markets around Japan, some of the photographs bear signs of what restorers call "silver mirroring": a condition that causes silver ions present in the paper to resurface, a sign of aging and poor storage conditions.

The photographs are recognizable at certain angles: portraits of people long gone, life and memories of people long gone. The landscapes become involuntary sanctuaries where nature gradually reclaims its space, covering human traces with moss, dust, and forgetfulness. This phenomenon fuels an aesthetic of suspended time, slow disappearance, and a memory that no one claims, yet that persists.

So, what (dis)appears? Long before the photographs were taken, the silver was already there, dormant in the emulsion, waiting. Not merely a photographic agent, but the spirit itself. In here, it resurfaces as the true ghost, reclaiming its rightful place on the paper.

Bensaltana was chosen by our Community Manager and Program Curator to participate in one of our Face-to-Face portfolio feedback sessions with our Guest Room Curator Jo. Trujillo Argüelles.

"The conversation with Jo. was the little push I needed to incorporate my own photography into this work of archive and image foraging. She helped me re-visualize the red thread of my work and see how it tells a story through its evolution. I left the meeting beautifully motivated to continue my research about the vanished and the disappearing, reorganizing my ideas so that the core of my practice remains clear and doesn’t get lost."

- Bensaltana's testimonial on her “Face-to-Face” Session