Adam Fuss

by Adam Fuss, Eugenia Parry

Adam Fuss has emerged as one of the bold and truly creative artists utilizing photography today. Fuss's photograms clearly break from those of his predecessors Man Ray, Moholy-Nagy and Talbot, and while striking a chord of homage, the images redefine how and what we see in pictures, both viscerally and intellectually. Like an eighteenth-century experimenter, Fuss utilizes organic and raw materials in an unusual approach, revealing spiritual and emotional process. Laid atop the paper for hours, and even days, colorization is recorded with a stroboscopic flash. Live snakes, the entrails of rabbits, eggs, cow liver, sperm, flowers, and stained glass circumscribe the vital, often mysterious energies emitted from these pictures. This book, the first major monograph of the artist's work, makes an important contribution to current discussions of photography's past and the question of its future.

Genres: Photography

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2000

Reviews

[Zefyr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fuss tried things with the tools of photography that are so brilliant it makes me want to spit. Some of his images leave me thinking about breathing. Five stars for that.

I'd have liked if the images from given series were grouped together and with information immediately local to them, rather than Parry's starting essay (which frankly I found myself skimming as it kept running so abstract as to feel more about her interest in Fuss than about Fuss himself) at the front and referencing the prints grouped seemingly randomly in the back. I kept having to flip forward and backward for no apparent reason.