Light Work has announced the exhibition “Revive,” featuring the work of Alison Rossiter. It runs Aug. 18-Oct. 22 in the Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery at Light Work. A reception will be held Thursday, Sept. 25, from 5-7 p.m.
Agfa Brovira Royal White, expired March 1940, processed 2013, fragment of irregular size, 7×6.25
In 2007, Rossiter purchased a battered box of silver gelatin print paper stamped with an expiration date of May 1, 1946. Hoping to use the paper to make photograms, she headed into the darkroom to make a test print. She describes what emerged on the paper as she moved it through the developer, stop and fix as a beautiful graphite drawing.
Rossiter uses camera-less photographic processes and expired paper to make abstract images relying on chance. The images are often aesthetically and conceptually in opposition to the exacting science of photography. Fingerprints, off-gassing, light leaks and mold serve as indexical evidence of the action of time.
She points out, “I don’t develop these prints. Time does.”
In the darkroom she is dipping, pouring and processing her collection of expired papers. Like the abstract expressionist painters she is often compared to, her process involves experimentation and a dialogue with simple raw materials.
Rossiter’s photographs are in the collections of major public institutions, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Rossiter was born in Jackson, Miss., in 1953 and lives and works in the New York metropolitan area.
