What keeps an artist rooted in analog processes in a digital age of instant gratification?

When images can be made and discarded in seconds, how does one insist on slowness, materiality, and touch?

This conversation opens a window into the world of Margrieta Jeltema, born under northern skies in the Netherlands. Trained in biology and philosophy, she began exploring bronze casting, painting, etching, and ceramics before finding her deepest voice in photography, guided by her father’s attic darkroom.

Working exclusively with analog cameras from 35mm to whole plate Jeltema transforms the act of photographing into a craft of patience and poetry. She creates silver-gelatin contact prints, albumen prints, experimental works, and hand-colored pieces, each carrying the physical trace of time.

Her vision has earned recognition worldwide: international exhibitions, publications in Silvershotz, B&W Fine Art Magazine, Fotonostrum, and more, along with numerous awards. Her books: The Taste of Tears, Una Terra Sacra, L’Infiorata, Minnelied, The Swan That Flew Away and The Song That Came Back to Us have received accolades from Px3 Paris and the Analog Sparks Awards.

Yet beyond the honors, what emerges in dialogue with her is a devotion to process, the belief that light on paper can still hold mystery, and the conviction that even in a world flooded with images, photography can remain a handmade conversation between matter, memory, and the human gaze. [Official Website]

What is the point of taking a photograph today when millions of similar ones already exist?

Maybe there is a way of making photographs that fall into a different category. Maybe there is a whole world of photographs where pictures are created rather than taken. There is a realm of images that refer to an idea. They become a language.
Although, in trying to answer this question, I thought mainly about my own practices with analog photography, later I realized that my statement could also refer to AI photography. This felt like a paradox. But the use of AI in photography might well be a tool to understand the real significance of what an image is and what its meaning can be. Photography is not the freezing of a moment or a truth of something that happened, but something else. Something else that it has been since its beginnings, and even earlier, when the camera obscura was used in painting. A tool to show what you wish to show. An act of seeing.

Do you feel more inspired or overwhelmed by the daily flood of circulating images?

I feel neither overwhelmed nor inspired by the daily flood of images. I try to find inspiration elsewhere in poetry, in nature, in the countryside where I live, with its ancient villages, its traditions, and the lingering Etruscan mysteries.

How do you make your work stand out amid global visual noise?

A work can stand out if it is made with passion, and sometimes a bit of luck can help a lot. I prefer the tools of slowness: analog films and glass plates, the smell of chemicals, the depth of the shades in an albumen print.

Has image saturation changed the way you look at things?

No. If anything, it has convinced me even more to go slower.

Do you think we still look attentively, or are we just scanning with our eyes?

Are we only looking, or are we seeing? Making a good picture is about seeing. It is an act, an interaction. It shows something we did not notice before, or it shows something in a new way. It is the start of a thread. We can think about it, come back to it, and see something different. There is a story. It’s not a one-way act. We participate in something, like when we look at a painting. What do we see?

How does the “like” culture affect your self-esteem or your perception of your work’s value?

Of course, there is always pleasure when someone even someone you don’t know likes your work. It is surely also stimulating, especially if the appreciation comes from someone you esteem. But I’m not sure how much this really matters. Maybe it’s better to confront oneself with great artists from the past with poets, with sculptors and strive for the unattainable, for something that resembles their works, something greater than they themselves were. A dream we chase.

Do you feel pressured to produce more images than you truly need to?

I feel no pressure. Only the pressure of the too many things I sometimes want to do a drive to shred veils (only to discover other ones), to get better both in what I want and in finding ways to realize that. But I feel that what I have learned has been a gift, not really mine.

What scares you more: audience indifference or algorithmic indifference?

I’m never scared sometimes desperate, when everything goes wrong, but not scared.

What do you hope will change, for better or worse, in the world of photography in the coming years?

I hope that photographers take up the many threads still left open in the realm of analog photography. I know there are many young photographers who are attracted to this they want to experiment, to share a vision, to work from scratch with tools that do not need to be expensive to achieve wonderful results, and that give the satisfaction of creating something new. And again, this may seem like a paradox, but together with AI-created images, they will redefine what photography is.