Material presence: 'Emanations' at Govett-Brewster

Abstract

"'Emanations' took its inspiration from Len Lye's 'shadowgraphs' produced in the 1930s and 1940s. A series of 1947 portraits, barely known during Lye's astonishing productive lifetime, in which he persuaded notable subjects such as Georgia O'Keeffe and Le Corbusier to press the sides of their faces to a sheet of photographic paper, formed the centre of the exhibition. From here, Wellington-based curator Geoffrey Batchen, one of the world's leading photography scholars, travelled backwards to the origins of photography and forwards to its most recent material experimentations."