Magnifying objects

In addition to her large-format metal prints, Victoria Coeln has developed a unique format with her Magnifying Objects, making her site-specific, time-limited light interventions—the Chromotopes—permanently accessible in miniature.

At the core of these Magnifying Objects are photographic images that Victoria Coeln captures of her Chromotopes using a vintage camera. These are typically photographic slides (large-format sheet film, 8 x 10", or 20.3 x 25.4 cm), which capture the Chromotopes down to the finest detail and are distinguished by exceptional color depth and sharpness. These slides are then placed into specially designed Magnifying Objects.

Each Magnifying Object is built into a light column that backlights the slide and is topped with a magnifying lens. When viewers lean over the large-format magnifier, their entire field of vision is immersed in the Chromotope. It is almost as if they are standing inside the space in miniature—able to look around and explore. The textures of the transformed landscapes, buildings, and interiors, their colors, and narrative traces reveal themselves with unexpected three-dimensionality. Looking through the magnifier allows viewers to grasp the complex interweaving—making the often-charged web of relationships between past and present, people and space, politics and nature appear, both metaphorically and literally, in a new light. Against this backdrop, the Magnifying Objects become a kind of re-enactment of the Chromotopes in miniature.

Heike Sütter

We see without giving it a second thought. The foundation of our vision—and the development of our eyesight—has always been, and remains, sunlight. Without light, neither the stars nor the Earth, nor anything upon it, would be visible.
But light itself?
Light, as such, is invisible to the human eye.  If it were visible, a countless number of light particles would obstruct our view. We would be unable to see each other, the things around us, or even the cosmos itself. Thus, light is invisible without matter—and, naturally, matter is invisible without light. And yet, the nearly unimaginable happens: when two invisible elements (matter and light) touch, they become visible together!

In everyday life, we rarely reflect on this phenomenon — so ingenious, yet so simple. We see without considering how seeing is even possible. Perhaps it is the greatest wonder with which we live. The moment we open our eyes to the world, our visual perception begins processing the finest details. Light rays enter our eyes and are immediately divided into different wavelengths—nanometer-sized units—which are then interpreted, as they have been for millennia. Since the dawn of evolution, we have likely speculated about the significance of the sun, but only much later did we begin to understand light as a technical medium and relate it to our own sight.

With Plato, Aristotle, Democritus, Hypatia, and Alhazen, Newton, Maxwell, Young and Helmholtz, Einstein and Curie (to name just a few), ever more knowledge has been generated about perception, light, and vision—knowledge that also underpins my own work.

But what are we still (perhaps always) blind to?
Since the epochal discovery of gravitational waves in 2015/16, physics too has increasingly asked: What rays, what information, what information transmitters remain undiscovered? What wonders do we see and process effortlessly, that we cannot yet detect or decipher with today’s knowledge and technology?

What is the true essence that can be shaped with such precision and delicacy through light? When it reveals itself, especially powerful and transformative moments arise. From invisible realms, new realities unfold, carrying an "inner light" — pointing the way to the future, like sight granted to the blind…

Victoria Coeln