- Venue
- Victoria & Albert Museum
- Location
- London
Painters! Sculptors! Non-art Students! Lend your eyes, to an exhibition of photographic proportions that blows new perspective of the medium into your practice or life. The Victoria and Albert museum has gained this reputation of’ examining art practices through the eyes of an elderly person’ but alas their contemporary exhibitions have instructed and delighted audiences.
The processes exhibited within this exhibit are as spectacular as the final outcomes and present the viewer a rather haunting but effective use of medium. Ordinarily, the essence of photography is its seemingly magical ability to fix shadows on light-sensitive surfaces and this would require a camera. Now the public have an opportunity to view work by five contemporary photographers who do not use a camera but alternative techniques such as casting shadows on photographic paper, manipulating light or chemically treating the surface of the paper.
Images prepared with a camera imply a documentary role and in contrast, camera-less photographs show what never really was. They are also always ‘original because they are not made from a negative. Encountered as fragments, traces, signs, memories or dreams, they leave room for the imagination, transforming the world of objects into a world of visions.
A particular deal-breaker for the public is ‘Untitled, (Körperfotogramm)’ (1962) by Floris Neusüss.
