Adam Fuss

"Adam Fuss was born in London in 1961 and grew up in rural England, where he first began to document the natural environment through photography. This led to an experimentation with unconventional photographic processes and his eventual abandonment of the camera altogether. Fuss’s work is distinctive for its contemporary reinterpretation of photography’s earliest techniques, particularly the camera-less methods of the daguerreotype and photogram. Fuss believes that in order for any photographic technique to work, it should be personalised and transfigured into a greater metaphor, engaging processes that take place in the natural world. Best known for life size photograms of water, Fuss’s evocative imagery is imbued by the spiritual and poetic. His deliberate distillation of the essence of photography – a flash of light on a sensitised surface – emphasizes themes of transformation and perception. Intentionally avoiding the detailed clarity of traditional photography, Fuss’s works are ghostly manifestations of light and shadow. As reviewed in The New Yorker: “A restlessly inventive photographer, Fuss has made some of the most exciting, mysterious and provocative images of the past twenty years.”. All information sourced from this site. 

The pieces of Fuss' that I was truly inspired by were his photograms of water, this is due to the fact that I was truly mesmerised by the pure detail that is involved within each piece - as it was something that I really wanted to feature within my own images. Though I was also inspired by the unique compositions that were naturally formed within each individual piece(though I am aware that for most of the images, Adam had no control over this), as it is something that I would like to incorporate within some of my own work as it is something that I never really consider to include within a photogram - and as this project is all about learning new skills that we maybe may have never tried before, this is going to be one of those skills that I am willing to learn and expand my knowledge upon for future reference when capturing any images. When finding the images of Adam Fuss I believed it to be the perfect style of response to incorporate into our collaborative project's theme of time as it is well known that water is a part of nature and something that we experience on a daily basis and so because of this fact I felt that it would be something for the viewer to really acknowledge and link towards the idea of time. The subject matter within Adam's work is something that the viewer could easily identify which is also another reason why I felt it would help to be the perfect response for our theme of 'Time'. 

Photograms are a type of photography that in the past I have been prone to stay away from due to my love/hate relationship with anything that involves using the darkroom. However, I felt that as this project is all about developing new skills and improving the way in which we work as practitioners it is something that I should try to develop my knowledge of as otherwise it would not really advance any further of me being scared to even enter the darkroom on my own. My main aims therefore when creating a response in the style of Fuss' work - is to capture images with true detail within them - whilst also capturing them with a composition that I would never have considered to create before. Overall I am very excited to attempt to create responses in this style as it is something that I have never tackled before though I am mainly interested in seeing what the other members of my group have produced to see whether or not or works combine or collide against each other.