Last chance to see - Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography

Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography currently on show at the Victoria & Albert Museum (until 20 February), takes the visitor on a whistle stop tour of camera-less photography today and the possibilities that it holds. Through the work of five international contemporary artists - Pierre Cordier, Susan Derges, Adam Fuss, Garry Fabian Miller and Floris Neusüss - the show explores the development of one of the earliest forms of photography into an expressive art form in its own right.

The exhibition opens with Floris Neusüss' use of camera-less photography in it's most raw form: the photogram - simply the obstruction of photo-sensitive paper with people or objects. Neusüss expands on the work of the forefathers of experimental photography - Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray and, most particularly William Henry Fox-Talbot - in a life-size photogram of Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire, the scene of the first ever negative exposure, taken by Fox-Talbot in 1835. A pioneer of the use of life-size models to produce photograms, Neusüss focusses on ideas of black and white, negatives and positives, presence and absence. His Körperfotogramms (body photograms) (1967) are highly sensual - the two-dimensional works feel almost three-dimensional as the viewer is left to complete the figure from the model's contact with the paper. In be right back (1984 & 1987), in which the paper on which a chair stands retains the shadow of someone sitting on it, the playful title becomes increasingly poignant as each year passes. 

Pierre Cordier's works signify a new beginning of experimentation that started with his discovery of the chemigram. Each chemigram is different - colours and patterns change depending on the varnish, wax or oils used to manipulate the emulsion, developer and fixer. Many of Cordier's works pay homage to artists and essayists, including the cubist painter Paul Klee and Argentine writer and poet, Jorge Luis Borges. 'I put some distance between myself and the notion of photography,' Cordier says in the documentary film accompanying the exhibition. 'I'm hoping to be included as an artist'. Chemigram 1/3/1970 III Minimal photography (1970) shows how well the medium lends itself to a stripped back, graphical or cubist way of seeing.

At first glance, Garry Fabian Miller's images are hard to see as photographs; they are more like abstract paintings. Influenced by the Quaker ethos: 'power, stillness and silence to uncover the light of conscience within', Miller's works are on a much larger and colourful scale than Cordier's cubist experimentations. With Miller's work, the viewer becomes more accustomed to the idea of using camera-less photography not to document their surroundings, but to create new surroundings. 'The pictures I make are something as yet unseen' Miller explains, 'which may only exist on the paper surface, or subsequently be found in the world.'

Susan Derges and Adam Fuss do not focus on the process and chemical experiments as much as the previous three artists. They are more intrigued by personal, expressive outcomes, exploring how this medium can be used to communicate much like any painter or sculptor would with paint or clay. Derges aims to communicate a sense of place, and has the desire to fix ever-changing, constantly renewing forms; many of her projects are carried out under moonlight, using flowing water to form the patterns and unique exposures.

Fuss uses the time he spends creating his images as meditation to reflect on his past experiences. His images are about escape, release and feature flight frequently - Birds in flight (1999) depicts a silhouette of a singular bird being guided and protected in it's ascent, circled by other birds. He describes photograms as having 'much less information but much more intimacy and feeling than a normal photograph'. Dagguerotype (2001) includes a butterfly, the classic symbol of the brevity of life and the passage of the soul. Fuss creates his images as a way of therapeutic healing.

All five artists in Shadow Catchers present a forward thinking outlook towards the possibilities of photography without a camera today. Unencumbered by the need to replicate real life as their digital counterparts are, they are free to investigate and experiment, taking the medium wherever the chemicals and their thoughts lead them.

Sally Ashley-Cound is a photographer and the author of visual arts blog LookSeeNow.