Analog Forever Magazine - "Palimpsest" February

We are excited to announce that our February 2023 online group exhibition, “Palimpsest,” is being curated by experimental alt-process photographer and poet, Angel O’Brien!

To enter, all you need to do is read and respond to the following prompt with your analog photography. The best of these images will be showcased in an online show, beginning February 13th, 2022. Good luck!

Prompt:   pal·imp·sest /ˈpaləm(p)ˌsest/ noun

1. a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.
2. something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.

When I was in architecture school, I learned a new word that has stuck with me. I did not know it at the time, but palimpsest was to be an idea that would have great meaning to me again and again. We are each of us a piece of parchment whose writing has been scraped off and been rewritten, built up from the many layers of life’s experiences (perhaps even the ones that affected those who came before us), the triumphs and heartbreaks, the hapless mistakes and intentional cruelties, the mispronunciations and blistered heels that become the memories in our heads and our hearts. Just as choosing which fork in the road to take can irrevocably change your fate, each layer can skew/alter/rearrange/filter all the things that come next. How can change, evolution, regression be made visible in a photograph?  How does absence exist within a photograph? Show me the work that has a past and a present, maybe even a future, all at the same time. Whether it’s literal/figurative collage or something more ethereal, I want to see the remnants, the subtle traces, mishmash, and erasures of life that’s in your