Justine Varga’s Photographic Inscriptions

Justine Varga and I conducted this interview via email in late 2021, after I was enchanted by her series Tachisme (2021). In the interview, we talked about photography as a medium, the omission of the photographic camera, its historical relevance, her artistic challenging of the negative within its time and space, and her haptic exploration of the photographic membrane. Through our conversation, Varga lucidly elaborates not only her personal approach to artistic creation, but the notion of photographicness itself: photography is always at the center of her inquiry, even if this inquiry is realized in terms of performance, drawing, painting, or a set of physical exchanges and bodily inscriptions. In short, her work always focuses on questioning the photograph and its meaning within a contemporary context.