Untitled
Artist: Adam Fuss (British, born 1961)
Date: 1985
Dimensions:
H: 23 1/4 in. (59.1 cm); W: 19 1/2 in. (49.5 cm)
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Carl B. Spitzer Fund
Object number: 2005.284
Label Text:A resident of New York since 1982, Adam Fuss was born in London in 1961. He first studied photography in Australia while working as a studio assistant to a commercial photographer. After arriving in New York, he worked as a commercial photographer documenting art exhibitions. Today he is widely recognized for his exploration of lesser known photographic techniques like photograms (placing objects directly on photo-sensitive paper and exposing them to light) and pinhole cameras (lensless cameras into which light enters through a simple hole). His exploration of the processes for making daguerreotypes, platinum prints, photograms, or images with a pinhole camera is not the result of a fascination with arcane technologies or a romance with the past; rather, it reflects a desire to compose and a passion to realize an idea. About his images Fuss has stated, “It’s only when I make a picture that I have to keep looking at that I feel I’ve succeeded. I’ve always needed to make images that have a sense of revelation to the viewer, namely me.”
While working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, photographer Adam Fuss became fascinated by the atmosphere of the classical sculpture galleries at night. He took this and the two other photographs on this wall with a pinhole camera—a simple camera without a lens, but with a small hole in one side to let in light. He wrote, “These figures have a certain kind of life…at night they’d come alive, full of power and mystery…I thought about taking these pinhole pictures at night, completely alone, and it seemed possible to create or recreate a photographic space in which the sculptures could breathe. Also, behind my move in this direction was a reaction to the pervasive technological-consumerist photographic culture.”
©protected by copyright
While working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, photographer Adam Fuss became fascinated by the atmosphere of the classical sculpture galleries at night. He took this and the two other photographs on this wall with a pinhole camera—a simple camera without a lens, but with a small hole in one side to let in light. He wrote, “These figures have a certain kind of life…at night they’d come alive, full of power and mystery…I thought about taking these pinhole pictures at night, completely alone, and it seemed possible to create or recreate a photographic space in which the sculptures could breathe. Also, behind my move in this direction was a reaction to the pervasive technological-consumerist photographic culture.”
©protected by copyright
Not on view
In Collection(s)