Amos Mann: Positive Negatives, Negative Positives

An exhibition of new photography exploring forms, textures, colours, and compositions found in nature, and the environmental damage caused by humans. Images are of found artefacts and specimens taken using film cameras in the field, and then re-photographed in the studio in physical composition with their negatives.

 

This process mirrors that of digital imaging programmes run by museums, galleries, and archives worldwide. Their aim is to produce high fidelity images of the art, artefacts, specimens, and photographic negatives in their collections, for longevity and access. Here, institutional goals are inverted – images are made using the same techniques, but instead, through creative play, produce expressive, open narratives and meanings.

 

Tensions and energies are drawn from the paradoxes and dichotomies fundamental to photography: object/image, negative/positive, analogue/digital, real/fake, colour opposites, and paradigms of scale, all of which remain explicit in the works and provide opportunities for new ways of looking at the relationships things have with their image.