Architecture of the Void, the In-between and the Transparent
“An emptiness full of possibilities.”
Adhering to the idea of a palimpsest, this body of work uses the Polaroid not as a photographic tool, but as a mutable structure. Without a camera, the emulsion is physically manipulated—scratched, pressed, torn—producing painterly forms through touch alone. These gestures disrupt and degrade the surface, layering destruction and reconstruction into each frame. The image is continually eroded, diminished, reshaped—until it is eventually torn in two, and the process begins again.
“An emptiness full of possibilities.”
Adhering to the idea of a palimpsest, this body of work uses the Polaroid not as a photographic tool, but as a mutable structure. Without a camera, the emulsion is physically manipulated—scratched, pressed, torn—producing painterly forms through touch alone. These gestures disrupt and degrade the surface, layering destruction and reconstruction into each frame. The image is continually eroded, diminished, reshaped—until it is eventually torn in two, and the process begins again.
Chloe McCarrick, 'Architecture of the Void I' (2025)
Medium: Original Photogram from polaroid negative
Size: 5 x 7
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Chloe McCarrick, 'Architecture of the Void V' (2025)
Medium: Original Photogram from polaroid negative- silver gelatin print
Size: 5 x 7
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What remains is not a photograph, but a trace: the scarred plastic shell, now acting as a negative, is contact-printed in the darkroom to produce a new image. These resulting works speak not of representation but of what has been lost, altered, or withheld. Beneath the plastic surface, cell-like forms emerge—echoing the fragility of skin, the vulnerability of memory. The inner emulsion, once sealed, becomes a mutable interior: unstable, disrupted, exposed.
In the ruins of each Polaroid lie scratches, fingerprints, smears—physical remnants of interaction, ritual, and effacement. These marks, both intentional and unconscious, resemble ravaged landscapes and abandoned spaces. They record a process of deconstruction, a searching beneath the surface for meaning, resonance, or self.
This series explores what it means to remember without a record—to hold on to absence, to leave behind a material trace in place of a clear image. It engages the gaps and silences left by memory, history, and institutional erasure, using abstraction as a language for what cannot be fully recovered.
In the ruins of each Polaroid lie scratches, fingerprints, smears—physical remnants of interaction, ritual, and effacement. These marks, both intentional and unconscious, resemble ravaged landscapes and abandoned spaces. They record a process of deconstruction, a searching beneath the surface for meaning, resonance, or self.
This series explores what it means to remember without a record—to hold on to absence, to leave behind a material trace in place of a clear image. It engages the gaps and silences left by memory, history, and institutional erasure, using abstraction as a language for what cannot be fully recovered.
Chloe McCarrick, 'Architecture of the Void VI' (2025)
Medium: Original Photogram from polaroid negative- silver gelatin print
Size: 5 x 7
Chloe McCarrick is a British multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores absence, memory, and the materiality of image-making. Working with alternative photographic processes—primarily cyanotype and camera-less techniques—she manipulates emulsion, surface, and form to create layered, tactile works that blur the boundaries between photography, printmaking, and collage. Her work often engages with themes of erasure, feminist history, and fragmented narratives, using process as both subject and method. Through abstraction and physical intervention, she reclaims overlooked stories and constructs visual records of loss, transformation, and persistence. Chloe lives and works between London and Paris, exhibiting internationally.
