The Sensual World | Peter Cochrane - Risograph Book

From The Sensual World, by Peter Cochrane.

The Sensual World began years before the pandemic, when I lost the ability to walk outside, drive long distances, or travel due to relentless anxiety and panic attacks. In 2017, I started work with a therapist who physically guided me back into the outdoors. Each week we would meet outside and navigate my fight or flight responses. A few minutes sitting on a bench one summer became half an hour near a pond the next spring. We worked diligently across the years, and I started bringing my medium format film camera on our excursions. I would steady myself by winding a new roll of film and photograph through the ebb and flow of panic. Eventually, I could pay more attention to and experience my surroundings in the moment, not just through the latent image found in my negatives. Four years later, I was photographing a field of flowers in West Virginia in total disbelief of my progress. 

As I scanned the film, I found secrets in the images I didn’t know were there. Memories danced into being as the orange-tinted negatives turned to vibrant colors on my screen. In this translation from physical film to digital screen, I felt some elusive yet crucial element was being chipped away. When speaking of photography, we speak about it as “information.” When there is no information in a shadow or a highlight, it is completely black or white. A well exposed photograph has a lot of information. Working with a risograph printer for its unique ink-layering process, I watched the colors blend to create an altogether new image—new information. It had the same core but different bones. I then digitally photographed the risograph to find new artifacts at a large scale.

Film photography is helping me understand how to reintegrate with the world, and I believe it can help others do the same. Covid shaped our everyday into unprecedented isolation. In different waves at different times we are doing our best to emerge again.