Experiments on Light (after Mary Somerville) was exhibited at the group exhibition 'La couleur est la lumière: Inventions historiques, experimentations contemporaines' at Le Point Du Jour, Cherbourg, France, curated by Nathalie Boulouch.
The show is an exploration of how ‘the invention of colour in photography resonates in current artistic creation’ (Le Point du Jour 2024). My work is exhibited alongside other contemporary artists and lesser-known pioneers of nineteenth-century early photography. These include some pioneers of early photography in France; Hippolyte Bayard, Louise Deglane, Louis Ducos du Hauron, Léon Gimpel, Louis Lumière, José Julio Rodrigues as well as a host of contemporary artists including; Hreinn Fridfinnsson, Patrick Faigenbaum, Hanako Murakami, and Laure Tiberghien.
In recent years I have been researching the work of the Scottish scientist Mary Somerville and her connections to early photography. Somerville represents a uniquely significant figure to address issues around gender and access in photographic invention. For this exhibition, I created photographic anthotypes in response to Somerville’s 1845 colour Experiments on Light.
My anthotypes (prints made with vegetable juices), were shown in a display case with an accompanying facsimile page from Somerville’s 1845 notebook demarcating the thresholds of the spectrum of light. The notebook is held in the Bodleian Library and shown with the permission of Somerville College, Oxford.
