Alison Rossiter - Photographs New York Friday, April 5, 2024 | Phillips

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  • Alison Rossiter produces camera-less imagery by developing expired unexposed photographic paper in darkroom chemistry. Over the years, she has amassed an extensive collection of nineteenth and twentieth century papers from a dwindling supply of a once-plentiful commodity. Rossiter holds a reverence for these antiquated materials, and her practice provides a means of revitalization.

     

    While some of Rossiter’s prints are made by immersing an entire sheet into chemistry, the present lot shows her ‘pooling’ technique, in which she selectively dips the paper into developer or, alternatively, pours the chemistry directly onto the sheet. In the present work, the amorphous forms are neither entirely aligned nor symmetrical due to the unpredictable nature of the chemistry. The result is an elegant, serendipitous composition of form and tonality – an entirely new type of photographic image built upon the foundation of the past.

    • Provenance

      Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto, 2010

    • Exhibited

      Process and Abstraction, Transformer Station, Cleveland, 7 February - 2 May 2015

HIGH VOLTAGE: CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE COLLECTION OF FRED AND LAURA BIDWELL

247

Fuji, expiration c.1930s, processed 2010

2010
Two unique gelatin silver prints, tipped together to board.
Each approximately 12 x 10 in. (30.5 x 25.4 cm)
Overall 12 x 20 in. (30.5 x 50.8 cm)

Signed, titled and dated in pencil on the verso.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$4,000 - 6,000 

Sold for $8,255

Contact Specialist

Sarah Krueger
Head of Department, Photographs
skrueger@phillips.com
 

Vanessa Hallett
Worldwide Head of Photographs and Chairwoman, Americas
vhallett@phillips.com

Photographs

New York Auction 5 April 2024