© Courtesy of Susan Derges/V&A images. ‘Arch 4 (summer)’, 2007/8.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London presents the exhibition, Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography. This show features the work of five international contemporary artists – Floris Neusüss, Pierre Cordier, Susan Derges, Garry Fabian Miller and Adam Fuss – who work without a camera. Instead, they create images on photographic paper by casting shadows and manipulating light, or by chemically treating the surface of the paper. The most common camera-less techniques, sometimes used in combination, are the photogram, the luminogram and the chemigram.

Images made with a camera imply a documentary role. In contrast, camera-less photographs show what has never really existed. They are also always ‘an 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. The show was curated by Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs at the V&A. The show catalogue is being published by Merrell.  Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography is on view until February 20, 2011.-V&A

© Garry Fabian Miller/ Courtesy of HackelBury Fine Art London. ‘The Night Cell, Winter 2009/10’.

© Courtesy of Floris Neusüss, ‘Untitled, (Körperfotogramm), Berlin, 1962‘.

© Pierre Cordier. Chemigram 25/1/66 V. 1966.

© Courtesy of Adam Fuss/ V&A Images. Invocation.