solo Gallery is excited to present Mitteleuropa by Guillaume Zuili. 

In the late 19th century, spirit photography became popular amongst individuals who believed spirits could be caught on camera. These images were created through double-exposure photography and experimentation, often using uncleaned photographic plates and pre-exposed images to have the appearance of ghostly figures. 

Since then, double-exposure photography has come a long way, and what began as a way to capture images of departed friends and relatives is now a form of creative expression. 

Technically, an echo is a sound effect where a sound wave bounces off a surface and reflects back to the listener, creating a delayed, distinct repetition of the original sound. Used metaphorically, an echo may variously describe a flashback or an awakening to something past. 

Zuili’s Mitteleuropa presents as a visual echo contextualizing the past as present. In painterly parlance atmospheric perspective refers to a gentle softening of background in service to foreground images – visual space as time, echoes of the past informing the present. Zuili’s images, technically and conceptually, present, as Herbert Marcuse reminds us in Eros and Civilization, “Time loses its power when remembrance redeems the past.”