Eigengrau
Eigengrau is a deeply personal photographic series that emerged from a period of darkness in my life. Rather than depicting external events, it turns inward, tracing an inner landscape where absence and presence blur. Through atmospheric, minimal images, the project becomes a meditation on loss, transformation, and the fragile light that still flickers within silence and shadow.
Eigengrau is the visual perception of a dark gray tone that appears in absolute darkness – for example, when you close your eyes. Despite having no external light stimulus, a faint, pulsating haze emerges in your visual field. This is an image without light, produced by the inner activity of your eyes and brain rather than illusion. Not pure black but an indistinct visual background that arises spontaneously from nothing, eigengrau exists at the threshold between seeing and not-seeing – darkness that carries an image. Darker than most colors yet lighter than true black, perceiving it requires turning your gaze inward, into a space where the eye stops depicting the world and begins forming its own impression.
In an existential and philosophical sense, eigengrau represents a liminal state: a dark, introspective condition where you find yourself beyond the world’s contours, yet still perceiving. It symbolizes an inner space where outlines fade but sensitivity emerges. This makes it not merely a perception but a state – a transition, a pause, an attunement, perhaps even a glimmer of hope. A place outside time and space.
In an existential and philosophical sense, eigengrau represents a liminal state: a dark, introspective condition where you find yourself beyond the world’s contours, yet still perceiving. It symbolizes an inner space where outlines fade but sensitivity emerges. This makes it not merely a perception but a state – a transition, a pause, an attunement, perhaps even a glimmer of hope. A place outside time and space.
As an image, eigengrau holds the tension between absence and presence. As a thought, it opens a space where silence and darkness become foundations rather than endings.
It is light without origin – and yet it can be glimpsed.
For me, eigengrau is a vision of the inner space I have entered when immersed in darkness – not the external darkness, but the one within. Here, something still flickers, hinting at direction. Not in clear shapes, but in contours, faint reflections, inner glints of light. Noticing and following these subtle signals requires cultivated sensitivity and willingness to listen closely to the echoes from within. This series consists of photographs that reflect such an inner process of mine.
