LIP member Hamish Stewart is exhibiting along with Geoff Chaplin, Alex Chater, Hellena Cleary, Julian Smart & Tom Sobota in this East London Photomonth show, which brings together the work of six photographers who work with pigment printing processes, which can trace their origins to the 1850s.
In an era when we can take a photograph with a mobile phone and upload it to facebook, it seems almost perverse to return to photographic technology in use 100 years ago and little used in the last 80 years. Yet this is exactly what six photographers who work with ‘pigment printing processes’ have chosen to do.
Mixing chemicals and preparing photographic emulsions by hand is a world away from the immediate and easily repeatable digital imaging technologies of today. Yet this artisanal approach to making photographic prints opens up a range of nuances that enable the creation of images with a tactile physical presence and a unique visual appearance that no factory-made process of today can equal.
To view the work of these six photographers is to gain an insight into the rich variety of technologies and methods utilised by photography since its inception 170 years ago. Yet today just a handful of these continue to be practised. This is a rare opportunity to see first hand photographic prints made using methods now largely forgotten – but kept alive through the dedicated efforts of a select group of individual artist/researchers.
The exhibition will also include examples of work by the inventor of the temperaprint process, Peter Fredrick who recently passed away.
Runs October 16 – November 15, 2009
Private View Thursday October 15th, 5-8pm
Clifford Thames Gallery
1st Floor
107 Clifton Street
London EC2A 4LG
For details please see www.geoffgallery.net/CliffordThamesGallery.html
Tube: Old Street or Liverpool St