Signed 1st Edition limited to 300 copies printed. Oddments is an unintentional photographic project. It reflects on the remnants of discourse, on what remains from the processes that take place in the darkroom, and on what is left behind like hurried visual notes in a notebook. It considers how photographic fragments, test prints usually regarded as no more than part of the working process, contain spontaneous decisions that reveal the participation of the subconscious and an underlying intention. From this perspective, the project begins with Gael del Río and Luca Bani’s realization that every image holds unintended narratives that, at first, even they themselves are unaware of. The secrets of each scene are gradually revealed through every act of manipulating the image. At the enlarger, they produce test strips from a negative, creating a new crop. They make notes on these strips, giving them new meaning. They keep them without assigning them any explicit purpose, allowing them to slip into oblivion. They accumulate, unordered, inside a bag, where they begin an inaudible dialogue. At that point, they escape both the artists’ hands and their intentions. Time plays its part. One day, the plastic bag has aged. Inside, the images have acquired a different meaning through accumulation, coexistence, and combination. They reveal a haunting sense of unity despite originating from the vision of two different people, and from different places, moments, and projects. Oddments truly comes into being when the artists recover these forgotten pieces, unearth them, and allow them to invite the construction of a story through fragments, creating from what appears dysfunctional, like a puzzle made of pieces of different sizes, something akin to a new body assembled from the limbs of different subjects. Architectures, bodies, objects, and landscapes no longer stand on their own. They become fragile and cease to belong to their original nature. A change of scale brings them together, making them equal, making them related. A fold becomes a joint, a chest becomes a dune, skin becomes a chasm, a curve becomes a meander. Everything ordinary becomes sublime, and vice versa: the unreachable peaks of a snow-covered mountain become nothing more than a rock crowned with guano. These test papers were born to remain incomplete, asymmetrical like odd numbers. Yet at some point they found completion in their encounter with others that were different and unrelated: their counterparts. This has a human parallel. Oddments is the result of the coming together of two people, two ways of seeing that seem to complement one another until they become indistinguishable. Oddments are remnants, fragments, discarded pieces transformed into something greater. They are the baggage that accompanies Gael del Río and Luca Bani when they choose to spare a handful of test papers from their destined place in the trash and turn them into a reflection on their practice as photographers. It is an act of surrender to what happens beyond their control, and the possibility of a question: what kind of discourse emerges from the remnants of discourse? Text by Carlos Martín, included in the book.