‘Captures of Infinity’ – Instant photography by Noemi Heidel

As an only child, I used to spend a lot of time on my own roaming around the Tuscan hills and by the nearby river, absorbed in the play of light and shade, the sound of chirping crickets, the scent of wild herbs,

daydreaming and creating my own little world.

And I remember a feeling of blissful oneness – as if time was standing still.

‘Captures of Infinity’ is an ongoing instant photography project by Noemi Heidel reflecting her everlasting attempt to capture and preserve brief, fugitive moments of greatness and beauty, caught during her travels, mostly in nature, often with her daughter as a subject. 

Intense, almost mesmerising, yet volatile fragments of life that evoke a feeling of nostalgia, best comprehended by the German concept of ‘Sehnsucht’ – a deep, emotional, almost painful, longing or yearning for something. A feeling that comes along with a desire to experience utopian, alternative realities beyond transiency and incompleteness.

‘Captures of Infinity’ is also about a state of mind related to the creation of the images, an elevating experience itself: the journey of focussing the mind through the camera lens, allowing the noise (inside and outside) to slowly fade away, patiently chasing and ultimately – with a little luck – getting to snatch one moment of pure beauty in the act of pressing the shutter release.

A single, carefully selected fragment of life – encapsulated in the frame of a picture – is suspended in time, enhanced in its glow, sublimised. Beyond its original concreteness, it becomes something imaginary and unlimited, a projection space for the imagination of the beholder, a catalyst for emotions, memories, sometimes hidden desires – like a glimpse into Infinity.

The exhibited photographs were shot between 2020 and 2022 on Palawan island in the Philippines, in Tuscany, in Provence, and in the surroundings of Berlin, home of the artist. All images where shot with either Polaroid sx70 Land or MiNT SRL670 camera on new Polaroid film.