nistic rejection of the camera invites us to reexamine
the kinds of imagery possible with the simplest of
photographic means. When compounded by the
open symbolism of his subject matter, the images
create a profound sense of magic and loss, fluctuat-
ing between the wonder of life and the inevitable
cessation of death.
AsachildFussmovedbackandforthbetweenthe
countryside of southeast England and southeast
Australia, where his mother’s family lived. Because
of his father’s illness and early death due to a stroke
and the frequent relocations as a consequence, Fuss’s
childhood years were riddled with uncertainty. The
only constant for the young artist seems to have been
his connection to nature, a relationship that has
obvious vestiges in his adult artistic preoccupations.
Fuss became invested in photography while still a
teenager, primarily interested in the gadgetry of the
camera and photo processing. After boarding school
in West Sussex, England, Fuss once again returned
to Australia to work as an assistant in a photo studio
where for the first time he was exposed to the history
of photography and the concomitant theoretical
issues. In 1982, Fuss moved to New York, working
at the Metropolitan Museum, where roaming the
sculpture halls at night he got the idea to take pin-
hole photographs of the classical figurative sculp-
tures. Using a handmade pinhole camera affixed
with an 810-inch photo back, Fuss created dra-
matic black-and-white images of the figures in space,
the forms centralized in the photos by the encroach-
ing circles of darkness and the focus fall-off so typical
of pinhole photography. He devoted the next two
years to shooting this first extended series of work, in
part motivated in reaction against the consumerist,
technological slant of commercial and art pho-
tography he saw elsewhere in the culture.
Fuss’s focus on the photogram, for which he is
perhaps best known, came about as the result of an
accident. While shooting sculpture in a museum in
Washington, D.C., he forgot to take the cover off the
hole of his makeshift pinhole camera, but because
light leaked within the box, when he developed the
photograph he witnessed the image of dust floating
within the interior of the camera recorded on the
paper, essentially creating his first photogram. This
revelation of what he could do without the camera
led to an intense period of experimentation, during
which Fuss happened upon many of the themes and
sources that continue to today: large-headed sun-
flowers pressed en masse against photosensitive pa-
per, seeming to grow and decay before our eyes;
spirals of light created by swinging a suspended flash-
light over Cibachrome paper; splashes and droplets
of water caught in frozen motion, alternating chaotic
and cataclysmic or serenely geometric; snakes wri-
thing through talcum powder and swimming through
water; young babies blotting out their own shadow
against hyperpigmented fields of yellow. The water
pictures are made by submerging photographic paper
in a shallow pan filled with water, in which a splash is
made, a snake released, a child lain down, the move-
ment caught in brief flashes of light. Despite the static
nature of the still images they exude a palpable ener-
gy, an immediate aftershock of the material presence
of the subjects to their own representation. The artist
describes his move from sophisticated SLR cameras
to low-tech pinhole photography to cameraless
photograms as a process of internalization, both in
terms of photographic methodology and in psycho-
logical, personal terms. As he has brought the source
closer and closer to direct contact with the surface of
his media he has turned further and further inside
himself for motivation and meaning. Both choices
wrestle the image from a space of darkness, the one
literally, the other metaphorically.
Two major series exist in Fuss’s oeuvre:Details of
LoveandMy Ghost.In the hotly colored Cibachrome
photograms ofDetails of Loverabbits pair off facing
one another, the cute and cuddly silhouettes suggest-
ing all the solace and communion of romantic love.
But their iconic bodies are in sharp contrast to the
mass of entrails spread out from mouth to anus
linking them in a visceral tangle of real and symbolic
connections. Intensifying the photomechanical,
photochemical nature of the images, the acids of the
internal organs in contact with the paper shift the
resulting color chemistry. In comparison, the color
palette ofMy Ghostis a subtle range of a daguerreo-
type’s silver blues and the graphic blacks, whites, and
smokey grays of silver gelatin photograms. True to
the title, all the images are ghostly and ethereal: sheer,
see-through structures of old-fashioned children’s
nightdresses, swirls of smoke bellowing up across
the picture plane, frantic birds caught in mid flight,
silvery embossed swans spreading out their wings,
stark figures of women hunched over in despair.
Collectively they evoke a story of sadness and mourn-
ing, potent images of a childhood rendered indeci-
pherable and abstract with age and memories
strangely recollected through the photographic, crea-
tive process. Fuss’s ability to render the literal meta-
phorical is at the heart of his production.
JanEstepSeealso:Camera: Pinhole; PhotogramBiography
Born in London, England, 1961. Living in New York, New York.FUSS, ADAM