The work is currently on display as part of Photography: A Living Art – Then and Now  – an exhibition that celebrates recently acquired portraits by contemporary artists whose work is part of the revival of early photographic processes. The exhibition runs from 20 October 2018 – 3 November 2019.

Christopher Bucklow is one of the leading figures of the contemporary British ‘cameraless’ photography movement. His other-worldly photographs of radiant men and women set against grounds of color are made through a complex multi-step process which begins with the artist projecting the shadow of his sitter on a large sheet of aluminum foil and tracing its outline. He then makes thousands of small pinholes in the foil silhouette. Using a contraption of his own device that places the foil over a large sheet of photographic paper, Bucklow then wheels his homemade “camera” out into daylight and pulls the “shutter” to briefly expose the paper to direct sunlight. Thus each finished picture becomes a unique photogram silhouette composed of thousands of pinhole photographs of the sun. The intensity of light on a given day and the length of exposure create unique color variations on how the resulting piece appears.