ADAM FUSS
(English, born 1961)
from the series, ‘My Ghost’, 2001
Unique gelatin silver print photogram mounted on muslin
88 3/4 x 58 3/4 x 2" (225.4 x 149.2 x 5 cm.)
Sarah Norton Goodyear Fund , 2002

Adam Fuss made this work with little more than smoke and light. It is a type of photograph, called a photogram, which is made without a camera. Fuss has been exploring early photographic processes and camera-less photography for many years. To make a photogram, light sensitive paper is placed behind an object which, when exposed to light, results in a shadowy image. In this piece, he has captured the ephemeral tendrils of a swirling cloud of smoke in a one-of-a-kind print.

This image is part of a series called "My Ghost," which this British-born photographer began in 1999. The series, as with all of Fuss’s work, is about life and death, birth, love and loss. It is his personal meditation on grief. In this quietly intimate series, pictures of smoke, christening gowns, butterflies, and flying birds give visible and metaphorical form to the intangible spiritual presence of a deceased person. So, in a sense, this elegant image of passing smoke can be read as a symbolic embodiment of a human soul.

- Jennifer Bayles, Educator for Special Projects