Altering the state of matter and guiding it toward a new dimension. Much more than a simple metamorphosis, transmutation speaks of the property that changes the destiny of matter, transforming it.

Transmutation. Where matter implodes and creates sprouts. A concept rooted in alchemy, transmutation indicates the ability to alter the state of matter and guide it toward a new dimension.

The works in the Transmutations series originate from an archive of old professional instant photographs, forgotten in the digital era. These are photographs taken between the mid-1970s and 2008, which Bergamo used on set before shooting, to verify that the image matched expectations. They were “test shots,” constituting that moment preceding the definitive shot, when the image takes shape and definition, articulating itself in its various symmetries. The original images portray interiors, still lifes, people: interior design photos, portraits and still lifes that documented lifestyles and the way people inhabited their spaces.

The creative process through which Bergamo transforms these instant photographs into contemporary artworks is simultaneously destructive and generative. First, the artist dissolves the gelatin with a specially created chemical solution. Subsequently, he intervenes manually, modeling the still-fluid gelatin, guiding the work in progress with his intervention. The result is abstract compositions in which the original image implodes, creating unprecedented visual sprouts: folds, cracks, overlapping layers that evoke suggestions from informal painting and images of natural phenomena, such as stones, landscapes, veins of the human body.

The theoretical reflection underlying this work concerns the nature of the image in the digital age. As the artist states: “The digital exposes, it doesn’t dig into recesses, it smooths and merely records. Film, on the contrary, offers three-dimensionality and depth.”

Transmutations is therefore also a manifesto against the homogenization of seeing, an act of poetic resistance that recovers the lost materiality and depth of the analog image. Decomposing to create, a radical gesture that aims to give new life to what was destined for oblivion, to transform memory into the present, to make art an act of regeneration and (re)invention.

The original works are miniatures measuring 8.5×10.8 cm, the size of the Polaroid 669 Polacolor ER instant and Fujifilm FP-100C instant photographs from which they are born. From these small unique creations, Bergamo then derived prints made on Hahnemuhle FineArt Baryta paper, which allow one to appreciate every detail and every nuance of the transmutation process.