Camera-less Photography

To understand camera-less photography we first need to unpack the term 'wet photography'. This is the process the process of making an image by using film, chemicals and photographic paper in a darkroom. A darkroom is a light tight room, where film is processed and enlargements are printed. Ambient light is controlled through the lens of an enlarger which holds the negative in place as the image is projected onto photographic paper. The paper is then developed by hand in a three‐step chemical process of developer, stop and fixative; a far cry from the digital technology we have grown accustomed to today.

A number of contemporary artists are revisiting wet photography as a means of creating photographic images, at times, without a camera. Instead, artists are utilising some of the early processes of photography that relied heavily on chemicals to produce an image, rather than taking a photograph using film and a camera. Some of these camera‐less processes include photograms, chemigrams and cyanotypes. By treating the surface of light sensitive paper with chemicals, artists manipulate light and shadows to record traces of the world, at times producing abstract images. Artists that work in this manner will experiment with the enlarger, chemicals and paper to create photographs that are not always representative of what we can see with the naked eye.