SARAB Collective: On Sound-Narrated Achromatic Worlds
Interviews
More about the artist:
SARAB Collective’s Lungo i margini del mondo (published by grani edizioni together with a vinyl) plunges into the crevices of monochrome photography, blurring the line between light and shadow, memory and absence. Their images evoke and whisper stories from the edges of perception. Founded in 2018 by Nahid Rezashateri and Gianluca Ceccarini, SARAB Collective thrives on exploring the uncharted. Their works operate on the margins and within the realms of the forgotten. In this interview, we delve into the minds behind SARAB Collective—unpacking their creative odyssey, the magnetic pull of black-and-white, and the profound meditation Lungo i margini del mondo offers on the liminal spaces of human experience.
Linda Zhengová:
Why monochrome? What’s it about stripping the world of color that feels so real, so honest? What truths do you think live in the shades of black and white?
SARAB:
Generally, in our visual works, we incorporate both photographic styles—color and black and white. Sometimes, we even blend the two. While the choice might appear deliberate, it often arises naturally during the lengthy process of creating a project. In the editing and post-production phases, something unexpected happens—a subconscious direction emerges. For Lungo i margini del mondo, the initial rough version included both color and black and white. We believed that to capture the multiplicity and complexity of reality with its infinite correspondences, mixing different styles was necessary.
One day, during an enlightening lesson at the Academy of Fine Arts, Nahid’s instructor suggested always discarding the first choice when designing a work. This advice resonated deeply with us and naturally influenced our approach. Shifting exclusively to black and white became a significant decision—it compelled us to delve deeper, to extract more from the images, and to stay intensely anchored to the concept of correspondence. This choice also inspired Tim Ingold to write the profound text that accompanies the book. His writing, in turn, influenced Valentino Barachini, the book’s curator for Grani Edizioni, who, captivated by Ingold’s text, decided to include vibrant, shifting pages in the book.
And there’s the magic! The images themselves embody the idea of correspondence, but the creation process revealed unexpected connections among the various contributors to the project. In the shades of black and white, perhaps no definitive truth resides. Instead, black and white propel us into a realm of sublimation, prompting us to question, explore, imagine, and push beyond the surface.
Ingold captures this wonderfully, describing a black-and-white world devoid of color as a realm of pure light—what photography teaches us—where things lack substance or surface: “It seems I am immersed in a world that knows neither life nor death—a world where the opposition between the two becomes meaningless. But what a beautiful world it is! I feel as if I am carried along like a swimmer in a river, oblivious to the banks on either side—a river of shimmering, liquescent light. Its waters, full of eddies and bubbles, sometimes race forward and sometimes lie still, perfectly reflecting the sky. Occasionally, things float by—not objects exactly, but phantoms, shadows in the light, sometimes sharply defined, resembling a feather or a leaf, but more often blurred, like shapes before tired eyes. These shadowy forms are insubstantial and lack surfaces. Were I to reach out and touch them, my fingers would pass through, as though through a void, encountering no resistance.”
[…] In the shades of black and white, perhaps no definitive truth resides. Instead, black and white propel us into a realm of sublimation, prompting us to question, explore, imagine, and push beyond the surface.
Linda Zhengová:
English anthropologist Tim Ingold (which you refer to in this project) talks about an “achromatic world” peeling back layers of perception. Did you find yourself discovering or unraveling anything unexpected by going monochrome?
SARAB:
Absolutely, black-and-white images transported our project into a dimension where everything seems immersed in a relentless flow, where oppositions dissolve, and mind and world converge. In the text accompanying Lungo i margini del mondo, Ingold writes: “For in the new reality in which I am now immersed, mind and world are one. The opposition between black-and-white and color has given way to endless shades of grey. All are adrift in flux where things, if discernible at all, are not the shades of pre-existing objects I thought they were, but the ephemeral forms of incessant movement. There’s streaming light and bubbling water, blowing wind and swirling mists, waving fronts and tangling roots. In this weightless world, everything is afloat.”
Ingold’s focus on color—or the lack thereof—is extraordinary and resonated deeply with Valentino Barachini. Valentino, besides being a photographer and editor, is also a sensitive painter. The colors he used in the book are “decolorized” primary hues, much like Ingold’s dream world. This dream dimension is particularly dear to us, especially in photography, where themes of memory and dreams often intersect. We believe there are no clear boundaries between reality, dreams, and memory. Creating a black-and-white world is an act of revealing the real, peeling away layers of perception, opening a door to the elsewhere. Interestingly, studies suggest colors are among the most forgotten details in dreams.
Linda Zhengová:
Your work feels almost touchable, like you could reach out and feel the textures. How do you bring that kind of raw, tactile energy to life through just light and shadow?
SARAB:
For us, the choice between color or black-and-white is secondary to the atmospheres and textures we wish to evoke. We naturally view our images as multidimensional, almost material—something you can sense, from the atmosphere to the folds and nooks. This sensory depth might come from the initial intention while shooting or through extensive post-production with archival materials.
We enjoy layering images and experimenting with both digital and physical filters—transparent plastic sheets, deformed or burned, dirty glass, fragments of ice, and more. It’s always about playing with light and shadow, crafting a visual language that invites viewers to feel the texture and presence of each scene.
[…] Studies suggest colors are among the most forgotten details in dreams.
Linda Zhengová:
Why vinyl? What made you want to pair these images with sound, and how do you think the two speak to each other?
SARAB:
For several years now, we’ve been pairing images with sound. We can no longer conceive of one without the other—it feels natural to match sounds with images and envision the book as a journey through a multisensory dimension. Flipping through the pages, feeling the texture of the paper, smelling it, discovering hidden images by unfolding double pages, all while listening to sounds crafted to enhance that experience—this is our vision of a photobook. It’s not just an object but an “augmented object,” a mechanism that generates experiences on multiple levels.
Linda Zhengová:
Tell me about the sounds on the vinyl. How did you pick or create them, and what kind of world do they build when layered over the photos?
SARAB:
The vinyl is a collaboration between us and two trumpet-playing musicians, Alessandro Ciccarelli (from Rome) and Tetsuroh Konishi (from Japan). Alessandro and I have been working together for years as an experimental electroacoustic duo called DAMAVAND, with Tetsuroh joining as a guest artist for this project. We started by creating a long track mainly composed of synthetic sounds, featuring a recurring electric piano phrase as a leitmotif. The idea was always to produce a continuous piece where various moments emerge and evolve, like a flow of correspondences.
We brought in Tetsuroh Konishi, who added his trumpet and diatonic harmonica sounds, and later Alessandro contributed with his wind instruments, along with diverse sounds, noises, and percussion. The atmosphere and cyclical emotional flow they created felt perfectly aligned with the images in the book. Valentino Barachini then proposed including the sounds on vinyl, and we were all immediately enthusiastic. Vinyl, like the book, has a tactile and material presence that perfectly complements this project.
[…] A photobook is an “augmented object,” a mechanism that generates experiences on multiple levels.
Linda Zhengová:
There’s something haunting about hearing music while looking at a still image. What do you hope people feel or experience when they immerse themselves in this multi-sensory journey?
SARAB:
We draw inspiration from Ingold’s words in the book: “For this world is intensely sonorous. Does the sound compensate for the loss of colour? Not at all! Rather, as the world of solid objects with their reflecting surfaces gives way to the world of flux, sound erupts out of colour itself. Sound is colour transformed, and I am immersed in it…” Ingold speaks of sound erupting from color and becoming its transformed essence. When we create projects combining sound and visuals, we aim for an art form where everything flows without boundaries, where senses blur, and where mutation, metamorphosis, and synesthesia are central. We hope people immerse themselves in this flow, experiencing it directly, and emerge from it somewhat disturbed. A similar synesthetic experience is present in our electroacoustic album Yugen, which merges images, poetry, writing, and sound, with each sound conceived as a synesthetic moment.
Linda Zhengová:
Do you think photography alone can capture the full spectrum of an experience? Or does adding sound and texture take it somewhere deeper, somewhere beyond what a single sense can grasp?
SARAB:
Both sound and images are immense and incredibly potent gateways of perception, as Aldous Huxley might say: “two magnificent mechanisms capable of creating imaginative worlds that transcend the boundaries of reality.” Using them together is, for us, an essential alchemy to fully experience the “elsewhere.” This is equally true for moving images and experimental cinema, often described as “expanded vision.” Philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer believed music—and we extend this to photography—has the power to momentarily lift us out of time and alleviate life’s anxieties.
We are particularly fond of Jean-Paul Sartre’s La Nausée, where he describes a state of liberation achieved through music. In a modest provincial French establishment, a waitress turns the handle of a phonograph, initiating a miraculous suspension. It’s jazz, an old 1920s ragtime, “Some of These Days,” sung by a woman with a raspy voice. The chorus “rushes forward like a cliff against the sea,” the rhythm is smooth and insistent, unstoppable by anything from the present world. In that moment, the protagonist’s nausea—pervading his existence—suddenly vanishes. The music stretches and expands, filling the room with its metallic transparency, pressing against the walls of our mundane time, and projecting us into the music, away from existence itself.
