Shadow Catchers - Victoria & Albert Museum
0 comment Monday, April 21, 2014 |
During October 2010 and February 2011, The V & A museum in London hosted an exhibition of experimental photograms. The exhibition was named Shadow Catchers, and was dedicated to camera-less photography.
I had stumbled upon Floris Neusüss and his thunderstorm print on tumblr, and was excited to find out more.
This piece of light-sensitive paper was left in a garden overnight, during a thunderstorm. You can physically see the chaos of natural forces playing out over the print.
My favourite artist from this exhibition, was Susan Derges. Derges had a similar approach to Neusüss, by leaving a piece of light sensitive paper between layers of ice.
However, Derges also made some intriguing photograms of tadpoles in a glass jar over varying points in their lifespan.


To an unsuspecting viewer, the glass jar could be a petri dish, and the light source could be from the base of a microscope.

This "chemigram" by Pierre Cordier has been described as being like "a nucleus of energy before the Big Bang". This is because the print is deliciously ambiguous, it could just as easily be viewed as a microbe as it could a giant volatile planet.
Garry Fabian Miller's work seems very astrological on outset.
This digital print, named "The Night Cell", could be a photograph of the night sky, as viewed through a telescope, however Fabian Miller's work is actually the result of many controlled experiments and sequences.
This exhibition has greatly inspired my own work, as between the collection of artists, there is a relationship between chaos and order. Neusüss and Derges allow the elements to decide when and where light can touch the paper, whereas Garry Fabian Miller produces many prints, tweaking a tried and tested method each time, with much more of a handle on the final outcome.
You can view many more pictures, and find out much more about the Shadow Catchers exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum website.

Labels: , , ,