Annie Maunder Open Category 2026

Category winner

Reverse Astronomy: Mother by Paweł Paweł 

Paweł says, "In this project I worked with analogue light-sensitive material, directing the lens toward the Sun. I subjected the negative to intense radiation, exploring the moment when light begins to physically affect the medium. I am interested in the relationship between the star and the material of the image. The Sun is not recorded in a traditional way; instead, its image becomes the result of different technical, physical and biological factors and my own actions. Observation shifts from an act of fixation to a process – a search for new ways of seeing and relationships between light, matter and time.

"The image was created using a custom-built, analogue, large-format camera. The film was directly exposed to solar radiation with an exposure time of approximately three minutes. It was then chemically developed and stored in controlled warm and humid conditions, allowing the biological transformation of the emulsion surface. The negatives forming the source material were subsequently re-photographed at microscopic scale. The final work consists of hundreds of scanned frames stacked using Helicon Focus and assembled into a single panoramic structure in Photoshop."

Custom-built, large-format, analogue camera, Tessar f/4.5 250 mm lens, Fujichrome 100 slide film, 3-minute exposure; microscopic re-photography setup.