Light Leak as Method: Theorizing a Photographic Accident

ABSTRACT This project began as a 35 mm film photography collection to document the presence of waste in the Northwest border of Tunisia, as the materiality of waste, its existence “everywhere,” has become a medium through which people in the region understand their positions at the margins of the nation‐state. Yet after months, I realized that a light leak had marked all of my photographs. Taking the accident as a chance encounter, I produced a collection of images that articulate the gap between their intended effects, of visualizing waste, and their final rendering, images marked by a light leak. In this essay, I trace the project's process from my initial intentions of photographing waste to the light leak accident, to the final rendering into a visual booklet. In doing so, I foreground the light leak as an accident that became a generative method to examine the spills, leaks, and overflows of wasteful landscapes in North Africa.