VInegar Syndrome (2026)

How can photographic archives be known not by the images they hold but by the scent they emit? While the visuality and sound of the photographic archive have received sustained academic attention, smell is seldom conceptualized as an epistemic instrument. This project foregrounds the conjuncture between olfaction, technology, and creative fabulation in a growing photographic archive of pre-1975 transparencies collected by the author in post-war Saigon, which captures everyday life in South Vietnam during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The project aims to examine the curious case of "vinegar syndrome" detected in the collection, a slow yet irreversible form of physicochemical decay that leads to the deformation of cellulose acetate film base and poses a distinct biological hazard to today's handlers. As the emulsion layer warps, curls, and crumbles in the tropical climate, the tangy scent signals not mere physical deterioration but definite loss of historico-political memories, ones excluded elsewhere in the official archives of the state. What does it mean to encounter a photographic archive at the limit of vision? What does it mean to locate, archive, and preservephotographic artifacts already destined for disappearance?