Escritura nocturna (Nocturnal Writing)

Iñaki Bonillas’ series of prints, Escritura nocturna (Nocturnal Writing), 2015, borrows its name from Charles Barbier’s code system, the forerunner of Braille. Soldiers used it during the Napoleonic Wars to communicate silently and without light in the darkness. The project is based on photographs, collected by the artist’s grandfather, kept in black letter size pieces of paper and then covered with embracing plastic sleeves. After years of protecting the images from dust and erosion, these photographs had stamped their contour onto the sheets with such precision that we see pages full of empty pictures, hollow rectangles—like ghosts of past images, or a code that needs to be deciphered: a nocturnal writing.