Your work treats light less as illumination and more as a physical substance. When did light stop being a tool and start becoming the subject itself for you?

MK I had a very technical education in photography, and that fundamentally shaped how I understand the medium. Over time, I became less interested in composition or the subjects I was photographing and more interested in how images actually come into being, what happens in the darkroom, how silver gelatin reacts when exposed to light, or even how digital images emerge at the level of individual pixels. That shift gave me access to photography as something both abstract and deeply physical. It led me to think about light not simply as a means of making images, but as a material in itself, one that connects science, spirituality, perception, and everyday experience. Influenced by contemporary physics and evolving ideas about reality, I found myself increasingly drawn to light as the true subject of my work.

Spectrographs are often associated with scientific measurement and precision. What happens to meaning when a tool designed to quantify becomes a vehicle for intuition or ambiguity?

MK It reminds us that we're always part of the system we're trying to measure. The idea that our instruments can produce completely objective knowledge is something we've largely moved beyond. Ambiguity is inevitable because the observer always participates in the observation.

The devices I build are intentionally imprecise, homemade DIY constructions that emphasize this relationship. Rather than eliminating subjectivity, they reveal it. Intuition has always been part of scientific discovery; we've simply forgotten that. Scientists make mistakes, have instincts, follow unexpected paths, and often those accidents lead to breakthroughs. My work exaggerates that condition rather than trying to erase it.

Working with light on film implies a certain surrender—to exposure, chemistry, and time. How much of your process is about control, and how much is about allowing the work to misbehave?

MK It's always a negotiation between control and accident. What interests me most is that the control has shifted away from the image itself and toward my own body. When I'm working in the darkroom, everything is moving: the paper, the light source, the lenses, and my body. The parameters are carefully established so that unpredictability can emerge.

The process has become almost choreographic. Photography is fundamentally about time, so I've developed an internal clock, knowing exactly when to pause, move, or shift position. Without that precision, the image disappears entirely. The dance creates the conditions where accidents can happen productively.

Spectral imagery reveals wavelengths we can't normally perceive. Do you see your work as expanding vision or complicating it?

MK If I had to choose, I'd say it complicates vision. My work relies heavily on layering, making perception less straightforward rather than more transparent.

Ultimately, though, I think it's less about vision itself than about image-making. I'm interested in exploring what happens when light encounters a photographic surface, not necessarily expanding what we see, but investigating how images come into existence.

Film carries time in a way that feels increasingly rare. What does slowness offer your practice in contrast to digital immediacy?

MK One of the central concerns of my work is expanding the photographic moment. Photography is often understood as an instant, a fraction of a second, but I've become interested in asking how long that moment can be stretched.

Initially, I explored this through long exposures, but now I've pushed that idea much further. Some images take hours to create. I've built cameras larger than my own body, placing myself physically inside the image-making process. It's a way of resisting a culture of immediacy while pushing photography to its spatial and temporal limits.

Many of your works hover between abstraction and documentation. What, if anything, do you feel you're documenting?

MK I'm documenting the relationship between artist and tool. Every project begins by inventing a device whose results I can't fully predict. The finished image becomes a record of that conversation, my attempts to understand how the tool behaves. Light becomes the material that reveals this interaction. More broadly, I hope the work suggests a world composed of countless interconnected structures constantly shifting and reorganizing themselves. Rather than documenting a specific subject, the images document a process of discovery.

To what extent do you consider light, film, or even failure collaborators rather than materials?

MK They're absolutely collaborators. The work exists within a system where every variable retains a certain autonomy. Light, chemistry, the device, the materials, and my own body are all in dialogue with one another.

The darkroom reinforces this because the image is only revealed once it's immersed in chemicals. It's almost never what I expected. That uncertainty is fundamental to the work and continually opens new possibilities I couldn't have planned.

Do you hope viewers approach your work analytically, trying to decode it, or sensorially, allowing the image to act on them?

MK I don't have a preferred approach. Different people will enter the work through different pathways.

Personally, I'm interested in what I think of as the poetics of technique. The physical world itself contains enough mystery. I don't feel the need to look beyond matter to find poetry. Ideally, viewers begin by analyzing the work but eventually realize there's no single solution to decode. At that point, analysis gives way to wonder.

Your work often echoes laboratories, archives, and scientific instruments. Are you interested in the authority of scientific imagery or in quietly undoing it?

MK Earlier in my practice, I used scientific language to reveal its intuitive and subjective dimensions. I'm still interested in the authority science holds over contemporary life and the role photography plays within systems of measurement, surveillance, and data.

But increasingly, my work is moving beyond scientific discourse itself. Those references remain present, yet I'm becoming more interested in the direct physical experience of making and encountering the work than in maintaining an explicit scientific framework.

Although your work can feel disembodied, it's ultimately experienced physically. How do you think about the body's role in encountering these images?

MK The body has become central to both making and experiencing the work. Creating these large-scale analog photographs is physically demanding. Instead of the careful precision traditionally associated with the darkroom, my process has become much more embodied, driven by movement, momentum, and endurance.

I'm increasingly interested in how that physical experience can be communicated to viewers. That's partly why I show the machines themselves and think carefully about the photographic paper as an object. The challenge is finding ways for the finished work to transmit the physical labor embedded within it.

Light is often treated as proof of presence or truth. Do you see your work as evidentiary, poetic, or something in between?

MK It's somewhere in between. There is certainly evidence of a real physical phenomenon. My process is materially direct and unfiltered. But what interests me is the poetics of technique: discovering poetry through observation, contemplation, and close attention to the material world itself. For me, those two qualities aren't opposites. They reinforce one another.

Does working in Mexico shape your practice in ways that might only become visible when you leave?

MK Absolutely. One of the things that continually inspires me is the way matter exists in Mexico City: the debris, the textures, the traces of time embedded throughout the urban landscape. I'm fascinated by how time inscribes itself onto materials, and Mexico offers endless opportunities to observe that.

Although my practice is primarily studio-based, I'm also deeply influenced by the artistic community around me. My studio functions as both a workspace and an exhibition space where artists regularly gather, making those ongoing conversations an essential part of my practice.

Can you show us the device you use to make these works?

MK Sure. It's super dark, but this is basically the device I mentioned in the interview. The idea is that everything is moving at the moment of making the image. I place the photographic paper around the inside walls of the cylinder, then begin projecting light through these very homemade lenses that produce simple forms. What's interesting is the complexity you can achieve from such basic elements. Once everything is in motion, the action begins to layer itself, and that's how the images emerge. Of course, all of this happens in complete darkness under red light.

How long did it take to build?

MK I actually built an earlier version first. It didn't take that long because I had help, and it's something that keeps evolving. I'm constantly adding new ways of projecting or refracting light. What really changes over time is the mechanism inside, the gadget itself.

Working at this scale must change everything about the process.

MK Exactly. At this scale, you have to rethink every aspect of production: how you're going to print, develop, and even dry the photographs. Everything has to be designed specifically for this project. The conventions of traditional darkroom photography basically fall apart.

If you think of this entire structure as a camera, then I also had to build an enormous sink just to develop the prints. The drying racks also had to be custom-made to support works of this size.

The tools become part of the language of the process. That's very important to me. Every single element required to make the image becomes just as important as the image itself, if not more important. What interests me most isn't the final photograph, but the device behind it and the process of arriving there.

Is there something light can never reveal, no matter how precisely it's captured?

MKI don't think light reveals everything to begin with. What it reveals always depends on how we choose to observe it and with what tools.

For me, light isn't a means of uncovering absolute truth. It's a vehicle for poetic expression. Both our bodies and our instruments are inherently limited, so every encounter with light remains partial. That limitation is precisely what makes it so compelling.

Is there another aspect of your process that we haven't seen yet?

MK Yes. I also have another body of work centered on oxidized paper, although I don't have that part of the studio set up right now. I can show you where it's stored.

After working this way in the darkroom, I found myself surrounded by material that no longer served its original purpose. The chemicals had oxidized and could no longer be used, and there were countless prints that hadn't worked. I reached a point where so much material was being discarded that I began wondering how it could be transformed into another body of work.

The series is made from oxidized paper and oxidized cloth. I use exhausted photographic chemicals to oxidize large metal tubs, then use the resulting pigment, this corrosive material, to intervene on paper and other discarded surfaces.

It's another side of my darkroom practice, where the material itself is transformed into a new series that also speaks about time. It's connected to photography in a strange way, where these indexical traces are transferred onto paper, but the emphasis shifts toward the chemical life of the process rather than the image itself.

It's really the result of years of oxidizing things.

Are you moving toward greater precision or further into uncertainty?

MK Technically, I'm definitely moving toward greater precision. As an artist, understanding your materials and your language with increasing clarity is essential.

Ironically, that precision gives you the freedom to create greater ambiguity. Like a virtuoso musician choosing to make noise, technical mastery allows uncertainty to become intentional. Whether the work ultimately becomes more ambiguous or more direct is still an open question for me.