the pencil of nature

Exhibition catalogue "Lightfall" Group show with Susan Derges, Gary Fabian Miller & Neil Reddy

Susie Needham's recent photograms of plants developed out of a collaboration with the Organic Herb Trading Company at Milverton, where she placed specimens directly onto light-sensitive paper to capture the "vitality and essence" of herbs and flowers. In the works made for this exhibition Needham disrupts the direct physical relationship between the print and its subject by splicing in another layer of imagery. For a previous series, she made photograms of dresses and other inanimate objects derived from paintings and family photographs. Here, the ghosts of these earlier works appear like the latent images of early camera negatives, revealed by the falling light that simultaneously fixes the plant's shadow.

Kate Best,

Assistant Curator of Photographs, Victoria and Albert Museum.