UNSEEN Photo Art Fair 2026: Solo Show by Dagmar van Weeghel

In this compelling body of work, van Weeghel returns to the nineteenth century to question the foundations of the photographic archive and the exclusions embedded within it. Through historical processes and contemporary portraiture, the artist examines who was made visible, who was left out of the frame, and how those absences continue to shape our visual culture today.

 

Developed over four years, BLOOM centres on contemporary women of African descent living in Europe, portrayed through a rare nineteenth-century carte de visite camera. By reclaiming a photographic language historically tied to systems of classification, van Weeghel creates space for new forms of presence within the visual vocabulary of European history. Each portrait is carefully staged and printed using historical techniques, including albumen printing, platinum-palladium printing and anthotypes made from self-grown and foraged flower pigments.

 

Botanical processes play a central role in the series. Through the fading nature of anthotypes and the symbolic language of flowers, van Weeghel reflects on memory, disappearance and the fragility of the archive. Rather than reconstructing the past, BLOOM proposes an alternative visual memory — one that places other bodies, stories and perspectives at its centre, while foregrounding agency, dignity and representation.

 

With BLOOM, Dagmar van Weeghel expands the archive and challenges the supposed neutrality of historical image-making, revealing how deeply visibility is shaped by power, selection and omission.