Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph

An unparalleled exploration of the art of cameraless photography, this expansive book offers an authoritative and lavishly illustrated history of photography made without a camera, along with a critical discussion of the practice. Since the early 19th century and the invention of photography, artists have been experimenting with various methods for creating photographs without a camera. At once exhaustive and compelling, this book reveals the myriad approaches artists have used to create photographic images using just paper and a source of radiation. Simultaneously a chronological history and a thematic study, this book explores a range of practices, some of which have been in use for more than a century, while others are entirely contemporary. From placing objects on light-sensitive paper and drawing on blackened glass plates to radiography, photocopying, and digital scanning, this is an elemental kind of photography that repudiates the idea that technology advances in only one direction. By eliminating the camera, artists are able to focus on other ways of making photographic pictures. They allow the world to leave its own imprint, to speak for itself as itself. This volume includes 160 exquisitely reproduced works of this kind. In turns abstract and realist, haunting and intricate, they seem to capture the very essence of their subjects. Featuring artists from the 19th century to today, this book explores cameraless photography as an important and influential medium that deserves to be included at the forefront of today's conversations about contemporary art. AUTHOR: Geoffrey Batchen is a photographic historian who has published numerous works on the subject and curated exhibitions around the world. He is currently a professor at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. 160 colour photos

About the Author :
GEOFFREY BATCHEN is a photographic historian who has published numerous works on the subject and curated exhibitions around the world. He is currently a professor at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.

Review :
..".all the pictures are dazzling, explosive and liberating to the medium in much the same way that the birth of abstraction freed painting from its earthly bounds." -The New York Times " Opening with a 45-page essay by Batchen, the catalogue is ambitious in both scope and breadth of coverage, providing informed access to every generation of photographers from inventors Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833) and William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77) onward. In addition to demonstrating the range of this interesting aspect of the medium, these images happen to be beautiful, so the catalogue is a pleasure to study. Summing up: â â â Highly Recommended." -Choice "Batchen's book provides a fascinating account of developments in science at the turn of the 20th century in the use of cameraless photography to uncover the inner life of things." -The Big Idea, New Zealand "Ultimately, the success of this publication rests on two closely interwoven components, both well resolved. On the one hand, Batchen has assembled a rich and diverse sampling of representative images, each testifying in its way to the unique creative and expressive potential of the cameraless photograph. On the other hand, his detailed probing of these images, the context of their production, and their significance vis-a-vis lens-based photographs makes it increasingly difficult to continue treating them 'as second-class citizens' (p. 5) within the larger history of photography." -Ciel Variable