By chance, a mobile phone rang while lying on photo paper inside a darkroom tray. When the paper was developed, it revealed a ghost-like trace of the phone’s blinking screen and vibrating body—an accidental portrait made without a camera. Created in 2003, at the dawn of mobile technology, these early devices with coloured LCD displays and backlit keys produced distinctly different photograms depending on the model. The resulting shapes hover like unfamiliar organisms, half machine, half apparition, somewhere between signal and shadow. Seen today, they feel like artefacts: traces of the “dinosaurs” of the mobile phone era, captured before their cultural impact was fully imaginable. Would a modern touchscreen leave a similar imprint, or has the glow become invisible?

Created in collaboration with Christoph Fuchs (2003).

Learn more here