August 3, 2010

Aditya Mandayam, a resident conceptual artist at Fabrica (a communication research lab in Treviso, Italy financed by the Benetton Group) is the inventor of the laptopogram. The South Indian, whose ancestors were Dravidian (an aboriginal race in India) priests, created the new photo processing method in the bathroom of his home in Italy one Sunday night. Immediately after, he posted pics on the Internet via tumblr and sites like WIRED and todayandtomorrow picked them up, quickly spreading news across the Web on the novel, antique-modern images the process produces.

Laptopograms are made by exposing photosensitive paper to the light of a flashing computer screen—not necessarily a laptop, although that is what Aditya uses. After exposure, the images are developed in a three-step process that has the photographer develop, stop and fix the image. For those unfamiliar with photo processing, this may appear to be a daunting task, but Aditya shares pictures and videos on his website to help novices. Once the process is completed, the images are washed in running water and “I put them in my bathtub for a few hours,” Aditya adds. His latest endeavor has him taking the prints from the tub to the video screen, as he creates short films incorporating his laptopograms. “The idea is to make a three-odd minute short, printed entirely by hand,” he shares, concluding, “These three minutes of cinema will take up the next eight months of my life.”