Platonographyphotography of mathematical objects - mostly found, sometimes made, never dishonest
Platonography is an experimental photographic practice for making reproducible photographs of mathematically defined subjects using the Eidograph computational camera. The word is new because the practice is: these pages are where it is being worked out in public, one photograph at a time.
Some subjects cannot sit for a camera because they are not anywhere. They are coordinates all the way down: attractors, fibrations, the folded shapes that live in arithmetic and nowhere else. Photographing them means building an instrument that exposes number instead of light - the same discipline as any camera, the same grain, the same patience, and a subject that never runs out of detail no matter how far you lean in.
Mostly found, sometimes made, never dishonest - and the last of those is the clause doing the work. Nothing here is modelled, styled or painted afterwards; the subject is written down in a few honest lines, the camera is specified like any instrument, and whatever the two of them produce together is the photograph. When the corners go soft it is because the glass in front of the sheet cannot flatten its field, not because softness looked right.
Most plates were found in mathematics that existed for its own reasons and would go on existing if this camera stopped. One was written down on purpose, to reach a picture somebody already had in mind - and it argued back for a day and a half, coming out black at the size it was wanted and refusing to show its own edges until the camera moved. That is the difference between a subject and an illustration: a subject can say no.
Where to begin
The practice: what a platonograph is, taken apart exposure to print. The instrument: the Eidograph, both marks. The commons: the public works, photographs computed by whoever shows up - one may be painting itself onto the living render right now.