The photographs here are composed of multiple layers of inflecting folds. In navigating this site, you can start anywhere, browse through the photographs to experience the unfolding of images, where the outside meets the inside of frame.

OR

You may want to tag along with my body together with more than human apparatuses to create the new. 

Inflection 

Hanoi’s streets are narrow. the mobile cameras took us to Ha Tien Street characterized by steep ancient buildings where the lower floors are converted to shops. Street vendors on bicycles carrying flowers, fruits and vegetables are a common sight. Wearing traditional handwoven bamboo hats known as Non-La,  these locals sell noodles, foods, fruits and various household goods in makeshift bamboo baskets. Busy pathways are turned into makeshift food stalls at night and motorbike parking spaces in the morning. Wooden chairs coupled with small tables that can snugly fit a petite body commonly laced the entire pathway converted into mobile restaurants. Neatly parked motorbikes and bicycles, and well-lined chairs create rhythm in composition. One could never escape the honks of sirens from cars taking control of the main roads. 

While in continuous search of a scene that would best capture the character of Hanoi, matters continuously hail my body offering a foray of objects competing for my attention. The chairs, motorbikes, and sounds inflect an agency that couldn't be ignored. It creates bumps and creases within the smooth space. Brewing with potentialities, walking along these alleys brings me back in time: looking upward, we are surrounded by a magnificent architectural blend of French, Chinese and Vietnamese-style buildings adorned with colourful lanterns.  Some entrances of shops are attractively decorated with native wooden lamps that greet you at the doorway. Vietnam is known for crafts made from bamboo and other natural materials. I mumbled how Hanoians were able to preserve these despite the temptation gentrification has to offer.  In a nearby house, wooden lintels are still well preserved, a masterpiece of Vietnamese art. Walls and doors are plastered with geometric design patterns. Dominant of these is the lotus design, a quaint signature of Vietnamese character, resiliency, and beauty.

Here one can sense the movement of bodies and apparatuses attempting to filter potential objects for photography. This is the smooth space where inflection emerges. The smooth space where folds of fabrics are created is an immanent plane constitutive of heterogeneous matters intra-acting(Barad, 2007). This plane is not yet formed or organized before the weaving of folds takes place. This space is the outside, a plane where one attempts to pick up and organize what will be included in the inside, a folding with. Each movement involves the folding of the body with the instrument and unfolding it back to create new patterns. The body lies in between, a passage, a wayfarer submissive to the agency of other matters it encounters along the way, in this sense, of matters, smell, other bodies, and sounds.

This first type of fold is inflection. Inflection is a variation, a cosmogenesis within a fold. This first fold is virtually situated within a space of potentialities where bodies encounter unsignified matters and substances. The body becomes a site of cosmogenesis, an event awaiting an event. The body is fluid. Like a curve passing through a tangent line, it slips through other matters and bodies bleeding like vaporous liquid blending and sneaking through crowds and alleys, halts for a while then senses something and absorbs something: the smell of food wafting around, the sound of vendors hailing, horns that made us stumble, the breathtaking site of architectural details of ancient buildings, bodies blocking our ways, colourful lanterns that adorned the street, the smell of incense hovering around our bodies. Each of these competes from the immanent plane attempting to get into our bodies- an inflection- creating curves of folds after folds.

While attempting to shoot an object, the movement of other matters can change the decision, a change of scale, and a gradient that affects homeostasis (Deleuze, 2006), a fluctuation that intervenes. It can be seen that matters and bodies are susceptible and reliant on other movements where such pause, fluctuation, and halt can give rise to a new folding, a new assemblage. "That is how we go from fold to fold and not from point to point, and how every contour is blurred to give definition to the formal powers of the raw material, which rise to the surface and are put forward as so many detours and supplementary folds" (Deleuze, 2006, p.17).  These undetermined matters pass through the tangent line, the latter refers to rules, and norms that govern the universe: this is the start of capture when bodies become intervening intercessors transforming matters into forms. Inflection, therefore, is a point of potential opposing convexity but, when captured by the strata, folds can be trapped into convex forms that is, normalized and restricted by the capitalist agenda. 

Deleuze (2006) describes Inflection as an S-formed sketch where the point of inflection is a concave that turns into convex. "It is the point of inflection itself, where the tangent crosses the curve. That is the point-fold" (Deleuze, 2006, p. 14), a site of cosmogenesis. Elizabeth Yaganisawa further explains inflection as the starting point of folds. It captures "the fundamental conditions of existence, the double forces of development: plus and minus, concave and convex" (Yaganisawa, n.d, p. 114).

Restless Folds

It can be gleaned from the preceding event that between points there will always be an inflection where the fold arises towards an infinity of possibilities. Hence, images are therefore composed of this never-ending movement of assemblages always changing and becoming. These folds are modulated within the body where organization, decisions take place. 

The frame that is used to separate the photograph from the outside is a multitude of textures and folds that never separate the inside from the outside, rather it forms a Mobius strip (Manning and Massumi, 2016) where the two planes are interconnected through reterritorialization and deterritorialization (Deleuze and Guattari, 2007). Each movement creates a new texture. The new object may take the form of another object, the case of modulation that is, the beginnings of a continuous variation of folds and the development of form. In Deleuze's (2006) reading of Leibniz, the latter refers to this as the branching of inflection. Branching creates another variation, another fold that is not separated but a metamorphosis of previous folds in variation. Deleuze now coins this phenomenon as the point of view. 

The smell of grilled pork and herbs tempts every passerby. The street is laced with dried fermented foods, prepared in aluminium bowls and added as ingredients for noodles or as condiments. While indecisive to shoot it, the smell hailed our bodies: a concoction of vinegar, salted fish and other herbs.

Aroma is a very strong factor in constituting the image of the scene. The material configuration of the photograph’s subject is triggered by the smell penetrating our bodies. Such aroma passes through our senses, making us stop and hit the shutter. Here, such folds are modulated by the senses. In one instance, I propped the camera on top of the motorbike's seat to provide stability to the equipment. Such collusion of matters, smell, colour variations in food, its physical arrangement, the camera lens, motorbikes and our bodies are inscribed in the photograph. Interestingly, the blockages, motorbikes, and stalls, create potential on how scenes will be framed. Instead of treating the seller as the subject, experimentation brought me to make the matters as the subject. Woven together, the photographic images recreate an image of its own. This is a deterritorialization of the curve, a concave movement that spirals to another territory, a diversion from the formal ways of taking photographs.  

Inclusions

In a darkly lit room, we sat in front of computers and downloaded the images captured for final processing. Layers of inclusions! Here, the bodies are completely entangled with machines, hand clamped to the mouse, fingers on keys while the eye voraciously navigates the screen. The machine responds to the body while the machine affects the body. Images are transposed to bits and bytes of data forming a grid of pixels composed and blended together.  For the machine, these are mere data algorithmically put together to create or reconstitute an image. A decrease and increase in vividness and saturation involve layers of data, therefore, creating multiple layers of folds or transformations.  Technological apparatuses possess an agency that takes part in the whole composite. In collusion with the body, both agentic forces decide on what can be finally included in the composite. "It is what is called the texture of a body, it is specifically the sum of its inner qualities, the latitude of their variation and the relation of their limits: hence the texture of gold"(Deleuze, 2006, p. 54).

"That is the very condition of 'compossibility,' in a manner of reconstituting over and again one and the same, infinitely infinite, converging series, the World, made of all series, its curvature having a unique variable. The differential relation thus acquires a new meaning, since it expresses the analytical extension of one series into another, and no more the unity of converging series that would not diverge in the least from each other. Now then, infinity also changes meaning. It acquires a fourth and still current dimension: it is no longer defined either by itself or by the 'limit' of a series, but by a law of order or continuity that classifies limits or transforms series into a 'totality' (the presently infinite totality of the world, or the transfinite)" (Deleuze, 2006, p.57).

From the above moments, chaos may constitute the possible, the body as a screen only allows composites that is, sifting through available composites until the fine specimens are left to be recomposed to serve the regime’s purpose. This is when we can only see and take pleasure in the finished photograph/images making the dark side or the out-of-frame excluded in the backdrop, in the depth of an abyss. These conditions are both challenged by Whitehead and Leibniz: Photography is an event and an event is an extension. Like a Mobius strip, the out-of-frame and the image are not separated rather the image within the frame is a composite, an extension from the outside. Framing happens when the body intervenes and acts as a filter or screen, fold after fold. 

Cultural images, therefore, are never static. it is always on the move. What composes it are hidden objects pulsating waiting to be discovered. A new breed of texture is created. From the preceding phenomena, images emerge from intra-action, a collusion of matters and bodies, fold after fold from inflection to inclusion. Photographs then are never separated from the outside but a metamorphosis of the outside to the inside. The outside is what constitutes the inside.

Inclusion is a point of capture, an organization within the strata, a composite of derived variables from the plane of inflection into a relational assemblage. "We are moving from inflection to inclusion in a subject, as if from the virtual to the real, inflection defining the fold, but inclusion defining the soul or the subject, that is, what envelops the fold, its final cause and its completed act" (Deleuze, 2006, p. 24). It is a passage from identicals to definable forms, the latter composed of all primary forms. The schema is a combination of forms, magnitudes, things, and substances (Deleuze, 2006) making their way to form concrete assemblages. Here, the material assemblages become more pronounced as machinic assemblages of multiple screens. 

Extending the pleats of folds, micromovements observed in between reveal the thorough selection of images captured by the device. From multiple bracketed shots generating multiple points of view, the photographer selects or filters among the options. These are pricklings, or little foldings that characterised these selection processes where alternative composites are chosen. Once unsatisfied by the presented alternatives, notice how the body is ignited to re-shoot. Minute perceptions nourish the final perception. One perception to another, fold after fold, until it reaches the macro perception.

Getting lost in a maze, our feet took us to Dong Xuan market where locals sell textiles. Despite the hustle and bustle of the market, we managed to twist and prance in between bulks of merchandise to get a shot of the women folding the fabrics. One of us is taking an oblique angle shot to create a cascade of textiles while others bend their knees for a close-up shot. Such points of view denote the perspective on how one frames the object. Gilles Deleuze explains: "Because every point of view is a point of view on variation. The point of view is not what varies with the subject, at least in the first instance; it is, to the contrary, the condition in which an eventual subject apprehends a variation (metamorphosis), or: something = x (anamorphosis)" (Deleuze, 2006, p. 21).

The body's movement to get the best angle exhibits the points of view on a variation. The unfolding as variation is enveloped in a point of view—an involution. Each point of view is a manifestation of the subject's reality. One could not ignore the intercession of other matters. In this typical market day, agencies of other bodies, and matters can change the point of view of an image. In one instance, people hurriedly passing in front of us detract our attention, thus, eventually changing our point of view. A single command of their voice to vacate the place can create a new folding, a new encounter, a new point of view. While waiting to clear the space, I was mesmerized by the different hues of fabric exhibiting movement of flows in an ocean of colours. The moving textiles soon became our subject. An assemblage of body, apparatus, and non-human matters re-fashions the object. Here, multiple folds from convexity to concavity are created to bring out the texture of the photographic image. Such transformation of the object refers to a correlative transformation of the subject: the subject is not a subject but, as Whitehead says, a 'superject'(Deleuze, 2006). Instead of locking the folds in convex directions, points of view offer potentialities: the unseen and muted can be sensed, manifesting the line of flight. The reverse happens: non-human subjects are brought to the foreground. Humans are no longer the dominating subject but become a subordinate element in a photographic composition. This troubles the standard practice of taking photographs that are used to stabilize the cultural identity of a country.

The edge of the frame may not be visible to the naked eye but beyond the frame are series of folds that merge the contours, break boundaries, and create pleats. The edges and boundaries of things find new interiorities, where techniques, contours, and qualities dissolve, slacken, or give way to viscosities that are more than their forms. In Harney and Moten’s (2013) words "absolute nothingness and the world of things converge […] [in] the churning waters of flesh […] [in] constant recombination" (p. 99). There is constancy of movement where the body blends and melds with other matters in constituting a photograph. Thus, agencies of matters affect the body while bodies affect them before giving form to an image. The living photographer is therefore produced as a result of the interacting overlapping heaps of folds that trigger us to press the shutter. The photographic image is a production machine affected by the ecology when deterritorializing an image.

Points of View

I realized that “Modernity has instilled in us certain criteria to qualify as photographers that is, following the rules of design that is normalized, rigid, and having its step-by-step procedures. This impedes the creativity of the artist limiting the principle’s capabilities thus, producing a universal approach to doing photography. No wonder, practitioners would only qualify as “photographers” when rules of designs are strictly applied and followed”.

“It is hard to get away from what we have gotten used to. I suddenly realized my body is trapped in the vortex of prison cells, norms and practices that were institutionalized leaving very little room for creativity. Following such rigid methods, I am only scratching the surface of a phenomenon while I remain blind that the underlying layers are alive with movements and intensities waiting to be grasped and given voice—the outside of the frame”.

This results in photographs emphasizing the dominance of a subject. The photographer is always in control following his/her intent. This is commonly depicted through hierarchical points of elements where the not-so-important are placed in the background and the subject in the foreground. The human as the all-knowing subject is widely celebrated as having control of phenomena.

Despite the chaos of movements and the agency of other matters hailing our attention,  what is produced are still the methodically photographed symmetrical photos of buildings along the way emphasizing its power. The grandiosity of these structures led us to capture the scenes that reflect the colonizing power of the different regimes. Here, our bodies and equipment are positioned at different points of view attempting to capture these iconic images known to represent Hanoi's timeless charm.

How did this happen? The careful choice of camera lens responds to what is intended. The angles employed ensure a depiction of power, a mirroring or if you will, a representation of what Hanoi is. The apparatus modulates colonial intent instead of having it stand on its own. For Joanna Zylinska, "These images involve the execution of technical and cultural algorithms that shape our image-making devices as well as our viewing practices" (Zylinska, 2017, p. 2). It is at this point that inflection is being transformed into a turning point towards two mirroring curves, two symmetrical folds reflecting each other, a capture! Inflected curves are manipulated by intervening powers to conform with norms pulling them back into the organized strata and closing them off from other intervening powers. This entails following the rules and principles of designs amenable to the Enlightenment agenda. The camera became an apparatus of capture, an instrument to serve the industry, the very reason why the camera is a tool for reflecting the outside.

Mirroring

Articulating the cultural image of Hanoi is an assemblage of material and bodily decisions. Thus, creating textures of Hanoi, a multiplicity. Perching the body against an edge, positioning the body in the middle of the street, knees half bent while compensating with the traffic, and adjusting our positions with the rays of light are movements to find the angle that best expresses the point of view. In photography, this point of view varies, based on this experiment, the variation or folds of point of view are triggered by other matters. A loud scream of horn forces bodies to change direction. Blockages detract from the “ideal” view instead, allowing the body to recreate another fold to capture a site. Thus, every point of view is a variation, a folding and unfolding.

The bifurcation between subject/object and photographers/being photographed has long been criticized by Azoulay (2016). These binary thoughts have long been the dominant way of understanding phenomena since the early 19th century putting the image/visual distinct from the outside. The frame becomes the symbol of this separation from the chaos of production to the filtered images. Errol Morris argues that "all images are always incomplete, that is, in photography, capturing a certain kind of reality there is always some things beyond the frame what he refers to as 'an epistemic shadow'" (Morris, 2014, p. 55).

It would be interesting to note the excess or what is left behind from the out-of-frame in photography. Although the transformation of folds from concave and convex offers a host of potentials to extend and recreate new textures from their folds, there is a need to apprehend the closing off of convex lines, and allow movement its freedom, that is, "when fluctuation is made to intervene in the place of internal homothesis" (Deleuze, 2006, p. 17) where it no longer follows projection or representation rather concavity create lines of flight (Deleuze and Guattari, 2007).

Up close, such an attempt towards inflecting towards concavity is experienced in multiple encounters. Concave shapes are more open to potentialities and further experimentation. Each move creates new folds. Movement is enacted by a collision of matters and bodies within the plane of immanence. A closer look at its matter’s becomings performatively explains the becoming of outside to the inside: the actualization of a photograph where bodies and matters are always in a dynamic folding and unfolding.  Here, curves are more modulated towards capturing the not seen, the silenced or the muted matters. The fold is a possibility of the object. It is the in-between where tensions, intensities, and coupling of matters and bodies happen, a modulation. In between the folds, there remains a latitude to add detour by making each interval a site of new folding. What happens in between folds? How do muted matters play an agentic role in developing the new? A dive into what happens in between folds is worth an adventure!