British-born artist Adam Fuss constructs his photographs without the use of a camera. In his recent photograms, Fuss extends the camera-less tradition first explored by photography’s pioneers such as William Henry Fox Talbot and Anna Atkins, and later mined by artists of the 1920s such as Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy, and Christian Schad. Fuss’s work is made from the simplest of means: light and a sheet of photographic paper. The current exhibition is comprised of two bodies of work. The spirals are based on a circular form of intense white light, surrounded by concentric rings like ripples from a stone dropped in water. The babies are formed by the dark silhouettes of infants swimming in what appear to be golden pools of light. Both series seem undeniably spiritual in nature; it is difficult when looking at Fuss’s images not to feel that aspects of both death and birth are being addressed.
Fuss’s work was included most recently in last year’s Whitney Biennial and will be shown in Vienna, Austria and at the Akron Art Museum later this month.
