By Manfred Naescher
Berlin, Germany: self-published, first edition, 2010
Pages: 24
Dimensions: 8.25 X 5.75"
Cover: cardstock
Binding: staplebound
Process: digital printing
Color: full color throughout
Edition Size: 100, signed and numbered
ISBN: none

Faces presents a series of watercolor portraits of female actors in films. As the marks of watercolor have solidified into visible traces of the passage of time on paper, the resulting image reveals a memory of the process. Derrida’s concept of cinema as “the art of allowing ghosts to come back” is interpreted here with watercolor acting as the medium through which ghosts are invited to the present. This process “presupposes a memory of the past that has never taken the form of the present” (Derrida), which is especially valid for film, a mere product of artifice. The images of Faces are both portraits and evocations of ghosts.