Adam Fuss: Water

Carter Ratcliff

Hardcover | 27.94 x 2.29 x 33.27 cm | 120 pp

Damiani | 2018 | 9788862085878

Adam Fuss has been exploring the subject of water for more than thirty years and is perhaps best known for life-size photograms of this essential element. This is the first book dedicated solely to the theme of water in Fuss’s oeuvre.

Included here are pictures that are now iconic in the history of contemporary photography, such as the swimming snakes, the splashing newborn baby, and Fuss’s studies of concentric circles created by drops. Alongside these are many unpublished images, all exquisitely reproduced.

The primary influence for Fuss is the personal observation of nature – nature being the underlying subject of all his work. The pictures in this volume were chosen by the artist and are the direct manifestations of the interaction of water and light. The scientific precision with which he renders his subject using photographic materials achieves greater acuity and distinctiveness than one could achieve with a camera and traditional photo-based techniques. This unique working process has influences that date back to the 19th-century work of pioneers such as William Henry Fox Talbot, Eugène Atget and Anna Atkins.