Of Light and Alchemy
Of Light and Alchemy
September 05 – October 03 , 2025
Guest Curator: Liz Allen
Nascent photographic technology was a delicate dance with light and chemistry fueled by curiosity and experimentation. In 1839 two processes were announced, first in France and later in England with great fanfare. However, Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot were not the only ones toiling in their labs “burning with desire” as Daguerre described his excitement in a letter to his collaborator Nicéphore Niépce in 1828. Many others endeavored with various processes to capture the potential of an image created by light bouncing off a subject onto a flat surface. Some motivated by commerce, others by science, and still others by beauty, they could not have known how photography would transform the world by advancing the dissemination of information, shaping our relationship to representation, and thus influencing culture and history.
Nascent photographic technology was a delicate dance with light and chemistry fueled by curiosity and experimentation. In 1839 two processes were announced, first in France and later in England with great fanfare. However, Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot were not the only ones toiling in their labs “burning with desire” as Daguerre described his excitement in a letter to his collaborator Nicéphore Niépce in 1828. Many others endeavored with various processes to capture the potential of an image created by light bouncing off a subject onto a flat surface. Some motivated by commerce, others by science, and still others by beauty, they could not have known how photography would transform the world by advancing the dissemination of information, shaping our relationship to representation, and thus influencing culture and history.
In the exhibition, Of Light and Alchemy, the desire still burns in these artists as they continue the rich and multi-faceted tradition of experimentation and discovery that was marked by those announcements nearly 200 years ago. Through various iterations of photo-sensitive materials, the artists delve into the human relationship to time, perception and metaphor in collaboration with light and nature to further expand the boundaries of experience.