This photographic work was exhibited at ‘Chasma’ - an exhibition of work by Royal College of Art School of Arts & Humanities PhD exhibition mentored and curated by Beaconsfield. Chasma brought together artist-researchers from the RCA’s School of Arts and Humanities in an exhibition mentored by Beaconsfield. The works in the exhibition are all further steps in the process of excavating new knowledge – new expressions of the untold and yet unseen.

This photograph is part of a larger series of work re-visiting, re-enacting and re-touching marginal histories of early photography. Scottish Polymath Mary Somerville’s (1780–1872) protophotographic experiments of 1835 were first published as Expériences sur la transmission des rayons chumiques du spectre solaire, à travers différents milieux in Comptes rendus. Made in an age before photographic images could be fixed (rendered permanent), her photochemical experiments exist today only in written word. This work re-enacts Somerville’s chemical and optical experiments, producing a physical encounter that offers an insight into the perception and experience of colour before the so-called ‘invention’ of photography in 1839.

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