Photo London Fair 2021 : Jo Bradford

Gas Gallery will be showing for the first time at the forthcoming Photo London Fair at Somerset House from 8 - 12 September showing the work of 2 abstract photographers Christine Wilkinson and Jo Bradford

Jo Bradford's three new collections launching at Photo London are under the headings of Hours, Minutes and Seconds. This being the correlation to how long the exposure to light was to create the colours and gradients in each collection.  

Jo says of these works :

“They are an exploration of time, but also of colour in terms of their transmittance and reflectance spectra and the overlap between them. Inspired by the colours I see around me, the books I am reading, my research and the view from my studio window. Each set captures a unique moment in time, held in stasis on paper during my ongoing journey through colour, light and time.

As one colour slips into the next it becomes less of itself and more of its neighbour. These transitions speak to me of loss, of renewed hope and of transformation. This is where the magic of the spectrum exists, and it has drawn me back time and time again, in a bid to capture these gradients and explore the sensations of the pure colour within.”

British Artist Jo Bradford is a master of the camera-less photograph process. Her work can be described as being ‘photographs of photography’ or pure photographs since they do not represent an external reality, referring only to themselves. 

For over 20 years Jo has spent countless hours in her analogue darkroom in Devon UK, working endlessly with only light, coloured filters, photosensitive paper and time itself to create her finely tuned studies of colour. Her meticulous recording of timings and colour combinations are extensively and intricately catalogued so that she can return to these as a starting point for her continued work known as luminograms, tracing light onto light sensitive paper.

Hours:

Within the new collection of works in the Hours series we can see the smooth and seamless gradation of light and colour. The depth of colour is of course relative to the amount of time the light has been exposed to the paper in the darkroom.  Using moving masks to slowly cover the work during the exposure, the results are deep, dark hues where the light has reached the paper for the full hour contrasted with bright areas where the light was only exposed fleetingly for seconds or minutes to create her mesmerising studies of light, time and colour. 

Minutes:

Jo Bradford’s set of 6 interconnected works entitled ‘Chroma’ is created entirely in her pitch-black darkroom. Jo has spent hours planning, testing, refining, and perfecting her method to achieve the exact gradation of colours. With months spent resolving ways to overlap the intensity of light and depth of colour to work through the chromatic scale creating these studies of blocks of time and intensity of colour. Each individual work corresponds with its neighbours, providing a dialogue for the colours as they morph into each other and traverse the spectrum. The outcome is a set of 6 photographic prints available in an edition of only 25. 

Seconds:

Jo Bradford’s most recent experimentation in the darkroom has been using instant film – much like a polaroid. The process here happens in exposure times of just fractions of seconds, as she rapidly moves her hands to mask light and apply coloured filters in between the light and the paper. These explorations performed in complete darkness result in unique flashes of captured colour as she traces light on to the paper, using masking techniques to allow varying degrees of exposure and colour saturation. The result captures her selected pure and varied colours on to paper, all faster than the blink of an eye

These works will be showing with Gas Gallery on Stand D11 in the Discovery zone at Photo London 2021 and will be available to order at the show and online from 6 September 2021