Syntaxis Photognosis

What happens to an image when it is transformed? At what point does it cease to represent what it originally depicted and begin to exist as something else? And what can these transformations reveal about the ways images shape our understanding of reality?

Syntaxis Photognosis is an ongoing artistic research project in which I investigate transformation as both a creative process and a way of thinking through images. Building on my practice of transforming historical photographs and illustrations, the project seeks to identify, trace and articulate the different operations through which images can acquire new forms, meanings and identities.

Over the years, I have developed an intuitive approach to transforming images through processes such as isolation, repetition, fragmentation, rotation, distortion, recombination and changes of scale or material. In Syntaxis Photognosis, these operations themselves become the subject of investigation. By mapping their possibilities and connections, I aim to develop a visual syntax in which transformation serves as the central organizing principle.

The term syntax refers not to a language of fixed symbols or meanings, but to a system of relationships and operations through which new configurations can emerge. The research explores how these processes might be described, visualized and combined, gradually taking shape as a form of visual notation or score. Rather than prescribing what an image should become, this evolving system offers a way to explore what images are capable of becoming.

The research draws on historical images from books and publications that can broadly be divided into three categories: those that classify, those that compare, and those that instruct.

Scientific illustrations, medical photographs and images from encyclopaedias are particularly significant because they were produced within systems of knowledge that sought to make reality visible, intelligible and ordered. Art historical books establish relationships between images through comparison, revealing similarities, differences and patterns that shape how we understand artistic traditions and the way their relationships influenced the development the history of art. Manuals and instructional books, in turn, use images to demonstrate procedures, explain processes and guide actions, presenting visual information not simply as something to observe, but as something to follow and perform.

By transforming these images, I look into the relationship between representation and knowledge. What happens to the authority of an image when its original context, form or function changes? How does its meaning shift when a descriptive illustration becomes an ambiguous object, or a medical photograph is translated into sculpture?

At the same time, Syntaxis Photognosis extends beyond questions of representation and interpretation. Transformation is also approached as a generative process through which new visual and material realities can emerge.

Syntaxis Photognosis unfolds through photographic experiments, three-dimensional studies, and speculative diagrams on their relations The emerging visual syntax functions as both an analytical and a speculative instrument. It allows me to examine the transformations underlying my existing work while opening up possibilities for forms and combinations that might not otherwise have emerged. In this way, the research moves between intuitive experimentation and systematic inquiry, between the desire to understand a process and the possibility of being surprised by its results.

Ultimately, the project is not concerned with establishing a universal theory of images or developing a closed visual language. Instead, it proposes transformation as a way of exploring the instability and potential of images: how they shape what we know, how they acquire new identities, and how, through their metamorphosis, they might give rise to ways of seeing and imagining the world that did not previously exist.