With their series FLOAT, artists Daniel Carillo + Eirik Johnson have collaborated to created unique daguerreotype photograms using hand-blown glass floats from Japanese fishing nets. Commonplace for much of the early 20th Century, such floats would often breaking free from their nets, traveling with ocean currents across the Pacific to the shores of the Pacific Northwest. These single and multi-plate daguereotype works take on the other worldly appearance of gaseous planets or single-cell organisms. Every bubble, scratch, and even the occasional stamped kanji character of their maker is present. The series is part of Johnson’s broader project Leviathan Rising, a multi-disciplinary work examining trans-oceanic commerce.
