Cameras are so last season. No photographer worth their salt uses fancy-shmancy equiptment for images anymore and we couldn’t be more pleased because quite frankly all the professional-level amateur holiday snaps this blogger has been exposed to are absolutely infuriating.
Our age of iPhone/Hipstamatic/digital overload is just plain, old cheating. And sadly, as any struggling professional photographer will tell you, the technologically well-endowed amateurs are fast usurping the actual art that is creating a beautiful image.
To remind us all of where photography actually came from, a new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London focusses on the camera-free purists and their different techniques, including photograms, chemigrams, dye-destruction prints, digital C-prints and luminograms.
Shadow Catchers follows five image artists and documents their teqcniques for creating images like this one by Adam Fuss, who used a technique called daguerreotypes. Do not fret, no sharp daggers are involved in the immortalizing of this butterfly.
The five documentaries highlight the different camera-less techniques used by each artist. As the title might imply, none use cameras, but all exploit light in combination with different methods or chemicals to manipulate an image onto photosensitive paper. More information and tips on how to perform image miracles can be found on this popular blog.
A great example is this haunting image created using the gelatin silver process by Floris Neususs. In this picture, the model sits directly onto the paper that is to be developed. The paper is already coated in small silver salt granules made of a gelatin matrix (get us and our techinical speak!). The whole image is exposed to light, and the parts of the paper where the model isn’t in direct contact with light up to make the silver colour. When the artist finally develops the image it has a reverse-negative effect as the model’s outline obstructs the silver reaction to create a shadow.
A lot of trouble, I hear you groan. Yes, but so was the Sistine Chapel. It’s called art.
Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography is on at the V&A 13 October 2010 – 20 February 2011 and you can book tickets here.