In Praise of Shadows

With only one week left of Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography at the V&A in London, do not to miss the opportunity to see work from five of the most innovative practitioners of camera-less photography. Removing the lens from the practice of photography makes it less about optics and more about chemistry, touch and imagination.

At the exhibition study day last Friday, where all of the photographers were present, I learned that many of the most striking images were happy accidents - after months of months of experimentation. The cryptic circles on Pierre Cordier's first of many chemigrams 'The Hungarian Revolution' (1956) were made by the movement of nail-varnish on photographic paper. So delighted was he with the result that it became the cover of a birthday card for a German girl, Erica - something to think about as Valentine's Day approaches and we are faced with endless shelves of cards with pink and red hearts!

Mistress of the waters, Susan Derges, is blessed with extraordinary powers of observation. She works by nightfall to produce her exquisite photograms of moving water. Immersing sheets of photographic paper into the choicest parts of a stream, she exposes them by torch and moonlight.

Gary Fabian Miller, the patient gardener of the group, is famed for sequences of images created by passing light through plant matter and explore the passing of time. I however, was more intrigued by his more recent work, made by a process of dye-destruction printing without the intervention of an object. Purely light and chemicals, 'The Night Cell' (2009/10) resembles an unearthly disk of stars.

For those who can still remember the story of Peter Pan's shadow, Floris Neususs's Korperphotograms, ( direct body exposures ) cannot fail to enchant. Sometimes sculptural, sprightly and scattering blossoms and at other times having a drawer-crumpled appearance (see above), these silhouettes are the closest most of us will get to fairies.

Perhaps spookiest of all are the photograms of Adam Fuss, which revisit obsolete, Victorian techniques to explore themes of self-reflection and mortality. You cannot look at his butterfly daguerrotype (2001) without looking into it - its overexposed blue surface turns it into a mirror - a reminder that you too will go the same way as the floating butterfly.

Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography is on at the V&A until Sunday February 20. Tickets £5 full price, £4 concessions

Acid Webs: Spinning Under the Influence

What do Christopher Kane's Spring/Summer 2011 collection and sick spiders' webs have in common? Thread and drugs is the unlikely answer.

At the Wellcome Institute's High Society exhibition which explores the historic impact of mind-altering drugs, I came across some images of webs spun by spiders on various substances including: marijuana, speed and caffeine. The experiment undertaken by NASA aimed to show the intoxicating effects of these drugs in a striking, graphic form.

The gentlest drug was marijuana - spiders on this spun a loose variant on the even, ripple-like structure of a regular web (image below). Scarily, the most potent was caffeine, which literally caused the spiders to crack up and produce an irregular web that resembled shattered glass (image top).

As though crafted by such spiders, Kane's Spring Summer 2011 collection, nicknamed 'Princess Margaret on Acid' injected neon-laced venom into traditional threads. Demure ladylike neck-lines and skirt-lengths and precise tailoring in the style of the English princess were transformed in sherbet hues, daring cut-aways and trompe d'oeil techniques: leather was carved into filigree lace and tulle given the Saville Row treatment (image top). Curvilinear Chinese tattoos, those inky webs of the skin, became lacy leather side-panels on dresses (image just above).

On models with wind-flushed complexions and sleek Sunday-School hair, the clothes looked summery and wearable. However, I can imagine that suspended from a hanger these bright, lacy creations might look like trippy X-ray visions. The fabric of brides, Goths and ladies of the night, lace is glamorous owing to its richness of pattern and thinness of substance. Flat and uninhabited by bodies it is a sort of man-made spider web, and in Kane's fluorescent colours becomes truly otherworldly.

Christening dress by Adam Fuss from the series My Ghost, 1997

The baroque webs beneath clothing form the subject of camera-less photographer Adam Fuss's image of a christening gown in the series My Ghost, currently on view at the V&A's exhibition Shadowcatchers: Camera-less Photography. With the aid of chemicals the white frock was exposed directly onto photographic paper. Bone-stiff, this X-ray-like image reveals the serpentine patterns and turgid structure of this seemingly soft and innocent garment. Fuss moves beyond the mere aesthetics of lace to reveal its esoteric aura and hint at sinister narratives.

Ethereal yet intoxicating, webs haunted by ghosts or other powdery substances continue to fascinate and inspire.