"The Whole Night Became My Darkroom"

Susan Derges is one of my favourtie photographers. Now a master at the Photogram she began with just an idea, to capture water at night time on photograph paper using no camera and just a flashlight to expose, "Going out the first time I did not quite know what I was doing." armed only with rolls of photographic paper and a torch, she headed to the river and suspended the paper into the water, exposing it with the flashlight for a tiny amount of time (about a millisecond). Whilst she probably had more failures at first than triumphs, eventually she got the concept down to a fine technique and achieved some stunning images, eventually moving on to using the same technique for forest flowers and trees. The images she recorded are absolutely gorgeous, some of the most beautiful pictures I have seen. The "Shoreline" series are stunning, with amazing colours and textures and it is hard to believe that for the forest images no camera was used.

Derges is an inspiration to all budding photographers. She got an idea and even though she didn't fully understand how to do it, she experimented and came out with some wonderfully sublime images! I hope you like them as much as I do!

Water Images








Forest Images