Lucas Leffler

These unique works, photographic sculptures composed of used iPhones, explore a pivotal year in the history of photography. In January 2007, Apple revolutionized the industry with the launch of the first iPhone, shaking up digital photography forever. A few months later, Kodak imploded its factories in Rochester, USA, marking the twilight of the silver age. For Lucas Leffler, these seemingly unrelated events embody the historic shift from analog to digital photography. However, Lucas Leffler refuses to resign himself to the demise of silver photography. To demonstrate that this two-hundred-year-old medium still has a role to play, he uses ambrotype, a photographic technique dating back to 1854, which enables the image to be fixed on a glass plate coated with a photosensitive emulsion. The artist uses this method to reveal the image of the destruction of the Kodak factories directly on the glass screens of iPhones, transforming the ubiquitous object in the pockets of a billion people in 2024 into a simple medium.
This artistic gesture offers Kodak symbolic revenge on Apple. By fusing the heritage of silver photography with the most widely used digital camera, Lucas Leffler transforms a vision of decline into a poetic act of resistance, exorcising the traumatic image of the closure of the Kodak factories. His resolutely optimistic approach weaves a link between the origins of this medium and contemporary art.