News: Art in decayed glass-plate negatives

There is an interesting article in the current issue of FT Weekend Magazine (January 19/20 2013) about "art trouvé" images created by the random fungal and chemical disintegration of some 19th century glass-plate negatives. (Double Alchemy, by Liz Jobey). The British photographer Tessa Traeger inherited a large collection of ancient photographic material in 1971. She has recently started to examine the negatives in the collection, and is fascinated at the way that decay adds an unexpected overlay to images more than a century old.

There is an exhibition of some of her recent prints, made from these damaged plates, at Purdy Hicks in South London (65 Hopton Street, SE1). For most of us, who cannot easily go to this exhibition, the article about (and partly by) Tessa Traeger, is accessible online at www.ft.com/traeger, or: link

Martin

Martin,

Choose some of the images to repost here. It's fine with editorial comment. I really like the idea of post processing, even though its haphazard and uncontrolled with decay. We should be prepared to see differently. This is a wakeup cal to be more open to different presentations of what are already good photographs,

Asher