Bringing together the work of nine international contemporary artists who apply historic photographic techniques to create innovative and unique artworks, Fundamentals is presented by Black Box Projects from 8th to 19th October 2019 at 68 Duke Street, Mayfair, London, W1K 6JY. The artists, many of whom work with handmade cameras, modified cameras, or no camera at all, are unified by their dedication to exploring the processes of the past and discovering novel approaches to factoring them into their practice, while redefining the very root of what photography can be.

The exhibition will include such increasingly rare techniques as photograms, ambrotypes, cyanotypes, tin-types, wet-plate collodion prints and silver gelatin prints. In presenting these methods Fundamentals will provide an opportunity to examine why these rudimentary techniques have benefitted from a resurgence in popularity in today’s age of digital technology and social media.

Included among the 40 works displayed in Fundamentals are photographic images created often without cameras by melting ice crystals, the path of the sun, and dust and dirt from an almost 500 day journey affecting and distorting the film carried from the North Pole to Antartica, while traditional techniques dating back to the very dawn of the photographic medium lend contemporary subject matter an otherworldly appearance.