Exhibition: There’s a certain Slant of light – Jane Brown
There’s a certain Slant of light takes a darker turn with the inclusion of an exciting new body of works by celebrated contemporary photographer Jane Brown. The mysterious interplay of light on greenhouse plants, and refracted through mirrors, antique glass and windows are the subjects of these extraordinary new works – each meticulously hand-printed on paper, tin or glass.
As though paying homage to drawing with light, Jane Brown presents us with a history lesson of photographic techniques and processes – photograms; internegatives; wet plate; silver gelatin and orotones.
The work also draws inspiration from items in the Castlemaine Art Museum collection including Victorian lustreware (the crystal prisms a reminder of Isaac Newton’s experiments with refracted light), as well as the little-known history of local portrait photographer A. D. Verey, whose glass-plate negatives were repurposed into greenhouses around the Castlemaine and Ballarat area. From CAM website.
Castlemaine Art Museum. Victoria until 28 May 2023
Photograph above. Jane Brown: Into Something Rich and Strange, 2018, toned silver gelatin print 60 x 50 cm.
I have enormous respect for Jane Brown’s b+w photography.
A question: Does the title of the exhibition refer to a poem by Emily Dickinson with the same title? That poem starts thus:
“There’s a particular angle of sunlight that comes through the window on winter afternoons and weighs down on me, much like the heaviness of hearing organ music in a big church.
“It prompts a feeling of divine pain in people. This pain doesn’t leave any visible marks, but rather a sense of inner confusion about the very meaning of things.”
I haven’t seen the exhibition at the Castlemaine Art Museum nor can I find the images online