Shadow Catchers is an effective title, with its magical and occult associations, and a nice echo of body snatchers into the bargain.
Shadow Catchers is an effective title, with its magical and occult associations, and a nice echo of body snatchers into the bargain. The exhibition (sponsored by Barclays Wealth) it labels is less impressive: a group of five individuals who might be photographers or might be artists showing us their experiments with light-sensitive materials.
Wandering round the more than usually subfusc exhibition space, I wondered whether this was not more properly a display for the Science or Natural History Museums. The dim lighting, apparently dictated by a concern for the durability of these exhibits, confers a reverential if not actively spiritual atmosphere on the proceedings, but could not disguise the fact that here were a load of nature slides and technical adventures. Art has to be more than technological innovation or gimmickry, and in this show the transformation only rarely takes place.
The visitor first encounters the work of the German Floris Neusüss (born 1937), who apparently pioneered the use of life models to make photograms, though I thought Man Ray did that 90 years ago.
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