Camera-less Photography at The V&A

I got over to the V&A the other day for an exhibition that Midas Crook would have loved.  It’s called Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography and it’s about just that.  Every photo on display has been taken without the use of a camera, and the results are fascinating.  The show has a very experimental flavour (at times the pieces are interesting because of how they have been created, rather than how they actually look) but it’s still ingenious and I’d recommend a visit before it finishes on the 20th February.

My favourite pieces were a pair of photograms (that’s the technical word for a photo of this sort) taken by Floris Neusüss during a thunderstorm at night.  Neusüss left sheets of photographic paper under the rain, then when the lightning flashed it brought the necessary exposure to create images such as the one below.

Floris Neusüss, 'Gewitterbild, Kassel, 1984'

If you’re interested in this, the V&A have dedicated a detailed portion of their website to the exhibition and have included video interviews with the artists.  Click below to head over there.

Shadow Catchers

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As for me, the lack of recent posts has been due to a lot of work on the new novel, as well as a project for this blog that’s got me very excited.  More soon.

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