The starting point for Materia was a pair of portraits of the same man, taken by the artist ten years apart (2014-2024), which showed not only what had changed but also what had strangely remained the same: within each portrait the accumulation of time became more visible than its passage. Around the same time Vic Bakin began printing on outdated Ukrainian photographic paper from the 1960s to the 2000s, each pack preserved in different conditions, some sheets faded, others with mould, fingerprints or almost no contrast. Parallels emerged between these worn surfaces and the vulnerability of the body and its skin. Projecting his negatives onto the aged paper, Bakin watched the image emerge hesitantly, often faded or weakened, until the instability of the paper mattered more than the image itself. Resistance of the medium, and an embrace of repetition, chance and variation, became fundamental parts of the project. Materia is a study of what happens when photography itself begins to age, fail and resist the image it is meant to carry.