Born: 1966

Art Education: 2013 – BA (Hons) Photography (First Class Honours), University of Westminster

Working Medium: Colour photographic paper

Artist Statement
These camera-less works are a return to the earliest form of photographic image making used by Fox Talbot and other early pioneers. The so-called photogram technique has never been entirely supplanted by the camera which Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy and many others have proven over an extended period.

In the 1960s Floris Neusüss embarked on his extensive series of nude photograms which he termed Körperbilder, also referred to as nudograms. Chisholm’s pieces aim to extend Neusüss’ black & white work, exploring the opportunities offered by the use of colour.

While we are accustomed to accepting the authority of photographic linear perspective renditions, these works offer three accounts of the subject in the same plane. The conflicting representations literally colour one another, challenging the veracity of any one photographic record.

Working Method

Photogram techniques involve working very directly with the subject itself. In this series the model is posed in total darkness on a large sheet of light sensitive photographic paper.  The model is then exposed to coloured lights from several sources arranged above and the paper chemically processed immediately after the exposure. With the image revealed in this way, the artist and model discuss the outcome and refine the image over the course of several further exposures. The works are unique items: each one is the actual piece of material with which the model’s body was in contact and on which his or her shadows were cast.

Personal Profile

Andrew lives and works in Nunhead, London, where he is renovating a dilapidated chapel. The scale of the building has enabled him to construct the dark studio needed for the current work and to install the equipment required for developing the large images.