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THE NEW ALCHEMISTS: Contemporary Photographers Transcending the Print
Photo50 is an exhibition of contemporary photography and features fifty works – most for sale – curated in 2012 by Sue Steward (writer, broadcaster, photography curator).
This year, Photo50 opened up a spectrum of contemporary photography from the analogue to the digital. This selection of work by twelve photographers focused on different ways of representing an image and it revealed the broad range of processes involved in image-making. Sue Steward has labelled them ‘alchemists’ because the term resonates with the ancient practitioners of photography, the experimenters with chemicals and paper, the pioneers of ‘writing with light’ which is what photo-graphy literally means.
Many images in this exhibition were produced through analogue processes and reveal surprising similarities with their digital counterparts; many mingle the two. There is also the changing assumption that the photographic print is the finished object, the ultimate goal of production. But it is no longer necessarily the end-point; the printed paper is enduring the transformation, partially destroyed or decorated, re-built to take on a new dimension – and becoming an original art work in its own right.
The works in Photo50 highlighted the richness and diversity of photography today. It’s almost impossible now to define ‘photography’ because of its porous nature and its convergence with painting film and craft, demonstrated in this exhibition. It is a vast art form - and London is a hub for these significant, beautiful, seismic changes.
Our Photography Focus Day on Wednesday 18 January 2012 examined contemporary photographic practice with debates, discussions and tours.
Download the full Photo50 Press Release here
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Julie Cockburn/ Boy/ 2011/ Found plastic on found photograph/ 25.3 x 20.3/ Courtesy of the artist
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