Manual life is a series of pictures taken by a large format analog camera.
In this work, I made stencils of plants, placed them in a film holder over the negative, and photographed a rural landscape near the city. The stencil covered some parts of the negative so that they were not exposed. In this way, I integrated the silhouette of a plant into the landscape in front of the camera. The featured plant in this picture is called sumac, it grows in climatically temperate regions. The photo series "Manual Life" shows typical plants from the Middle East, which either cannot grow in Europe or only under difficult conditions. Or are unfamiliar and overlooked for culinary use. As can be seen in this picture, the right side was exposed to the light. Due to the stencil, the film holder could not be fully closed, which led to a fading effect towards white on the right side of the image.
This event reflects the delicate balance between light and disappearance, a theme that can be found both in photography and in the life cycle of plants.