Cameraless Photography

One of two launch volumes in an important and highly collectible new photography series by the V&A, here is an introduction to the history of cameraless photography in over 125 key images from the V&A’s outstanding collection.

The V&A Photography Library is a new series of accessible, introductory volumes to the key themes, works, objects and individuals in photography, illustrated with unprecedented access to the V&A’s photography collection, the oldest held by a public museum and one of the largest and finest in the world, now expanded with acquisitions from the Royal Photographic Society collection.

Written by Martin Barnes, Senior Curator of Photographs at the V&A, and publishing to coincide with the launch of the V&A’s new Photography Centre in autumn 2018, Cameraless Photography presents a concise historical survey of photographic images created without a camera. With over 125 photographs supported by extended commentaries and an introduction, it embraces a chronology spanning the early photographic experiments of the likes of Anna Atkins in the 19th century through the avant-garde photograms of modernists such as Man Ray, to the work of contemporary artists, such as Susan Derges, nearly two centuries later.

Visually compelling, Cameraless Photography will be an outstanding introductory overview of the key creative, cameraless processes running throughout the history of photography – including photograms, chemigrams, luminograms, dye destruction prints and more – illustrated by the cameraless work of some of photography’s greatest names.