Output details

'Without Sun’, A solo exhibition of large, medium and small photographs of spaces, cityscapes and landscapes.

As with the exhibition in Trondheim (see Output 1), the photographs were taken on large format negative film, and both exhibitions had a cluster of photographs of the extraordinary remote settlement (mining town and radar outpost) in Svalbard, Norway. However, the London exhibition displaced the argument by setting Svalbard within settings familiar to a London audience, including, for example, studies of London, Orford Ness, the Smithsons’ school at Hunstanton, and Le Corbusier’s Maison Lipchitz-Miestchaninoff.

As also with the Trondheim exhibition, the contexts were thoroughly researched in order to accurately record the place of buildings within their contexts. The exhibition title recalls Chris Marker’s film, Sans Soleil (1983) and the ethos is captured in this extract from Tom Emerson’s catalogue introduction: “The laconic stillness of his [DG’s] photographs narrates another modernity; a precarious constructed world re-constructed as singular photographic episodes...The recurring composition is extremely precise which...can initially pass as objective – objectif is the French word for camera lens – and, if Grandorge’s images are monumental and still, they are also doomed, ghostly like he is recording the end of something....”

This solo exhibition also grew out of my reputation as a professional photographer (see details, Output 1), but represents my continuing concern with the paradox of constructional hubris and its fragility. It is an honour to be included among von Kant’s photographers, and the installation exploited the subtle renovation of the original 17th-century London house that is his gallery.