Visiting the V&A...

I have always wanted to go to the V&A Museum and on a recent trip to London I got to do so. I was a bit let down as apparently the fashion section is closed until early 2012. However I still made the most of the visit and got to see many other interesting exhibitons. The current exhibiton that was very inspiring was photography work called 'Shadow Catchers.' This exhibitons presents the work of five contemporary artists, Floris Neusüss, Pierre Cordier, Susan Derges, Garry Fabian Miller and Adam Fuss, who all work without a camera. Instead of the use of a camera they create images on photographic paper by casing shadows or manipulating light. They can also do this by chemically treating the paper.
I was very intrigued by this method and found the whole theory behind the concept fascinating!

The work I found most inspring was by the artist Floris Neusüss.He has dedicated his whole career to extending the practice, study and teaching of the photogram. His works often deal in opposites: black and white, shadow and light, movement and stillness, presence and absence, and in the translation of three dimensions into two.

Here, the varying distance of parts of the body to the paper has created sharper or softer outlines.

The image shown here was created by placing photographic paper in a garden at night during a thunderstorm, and letting lightning expose the paper.

In this installation piece, a chair stands on a sheet of photographic paper that retains the shadow of a person now absent from the seat.