Let There Be Light: The Black Swans of Ellen Carey, (Que la lumière soit: les cygnes noirs d'Ellen Carey)

Galerie Miranda, Paris, 5 May - 25 June 2022.

For the 21st century, for Paris, the ‘City of Light’, for us, Ellen Carey brings her arc into the future with Crush & Pull with Rollbacks & Penlights, a completely new 21st century photo-object from Polaroid’s monumental negative, which allows Carey, its ‘camera operator’, to reposition “light drawing” anew. It highlights Polaroid and its huge 20 X 24 camera as one of the medium’s 20th century game changers.

Carey visually consults Talbot, Daguerre, and Anna Atkins, the tripod of 19th century game changers: Talbot’s negative-to-positive duality of the photogram-as-image is doubled while Daguerre is mirrored in the glossy polish of Polaroid’s pristine surface and crisp picture; Talbot’s soft-focus, non-color compositions in blurry outlines sees light’s ‘shadow’ while Prussian blue sees colour-as-light transformed by Anna Atkins’ cyanotype images.

When light becomes visible the object speaks. Ellen Carey’s object says craquelure, parabola, hue, abstract, process, minimal, Polaroid, photogram, black swans, light, beauty, color, wonder, invention, innovation. It says, Crush & Pull with Rollbacks & Penlights.