Mycelium Over Memories

A few months ago, several forgotten 35mm film rolls were found more than twenty years after they were shot. Developing them brought back images and moments that had long been forgotten. As the film aged, mycelium intervened, reshaping the negatives and revealing how time can grow organically over memory.

Mycelium Over Memories emerged as a way to understand photography as both archive and living material, where recovered images are transformed through chance, time, and organic processes.

“While organizing my house, I came across several forgotten 35mm film rolls, shot more than twenty years ago. I didn’t know exactly when they were taken, or even if they truly contained images, but they appeared to be exposed rolls, ready to be developed. So I sent them in.

When I received the results, the experience was deeply moving. Moments resurfaced that I would have never remembered again if I hadn’t found those rolls. Images of events that had completely disappeared from my conscious memory, suddenly came back to life.

One roll, in particular, surprised me profoundly.

Around 2002, while I was studying design and taking a black-and-white photography course, I photographed the daughter of a close friend. During one of their visits to my home, I made this small, spontaneous portrait session. At the time, it felt like a simple, casual moment, nothing I imagined would resurface decades later.

What made these photographs especially striking is the condition of the film itself. Due to its age, the roll had developed mold, and the mycelium began to take over the image, leaving organic traces on the negatives. When scanned, this natural intervention produced an unexpected and almost surreal visual effect. Remarkably, the subject’s face remains relatively visible throughout the images. I was drawn to the atmosphere that emerged, the movement of the hair and dress, and the textures and marks created by the mycelium. The result feels both magical and ethereal. It is an effect I could never have intentionally recreated.

For me, this experience reinforces the profound value of photography as a form of documentation. Had I never found this roll, I would have never remembered this photo session, nor the quiet intimacy of that moment.

Analog photography, to me, is pure magic. These film rolls function like time machines. I deeply encourage anyone who has never worked with analog photography, or who hasn’t done so in many years, to experience it. There is something beautiful in its unpredictability, in the constant presence of chance.

Photography in any format is powerful, but analog photography uniquely allows for these kinds of surprises, unexpected outcomes that arrive almost like gifts."

by Marianela Calvo Jiménez, Instant Karma Co-founder.