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Project: White Cube
Publication: Design Week
Date: January 2008
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Large prints or small? Simple black frames or lightboxes? Spotlights for drama or subtle illumination to lose shadows? Dominic Lutyens discovers that there's more to the art of photographic display than meets the eye.
Since Photography is generally figurative you can often engage with it more easily and quickly than with, say, abstract art. This can mean that the images in exhibitions are often so engrossing that you may not pay much attention to how they are dìsplayed. Yet, it's a highly considered process. Requiring careful lighting to avoid glare and shrewd design to sustain the dramatic ambience of the collection, displaying photography has its challenges. And the practice can be subjective. Rather like typography, hanging can be less about precise mathematics than about seeing how things look best visually or
intuitively. Designers and curators also need to work within the parameters of a room's architecture or make the best of its limitations and quirks.
Lìghting is also a major consideration, a side issue of thìs being conservation.'With old prints, light needs to be kept within strict limits due to the fragile nature of materials used in the past,' says Douglas James of lighting consultancy Mindseye, which has desìgned the lighting for photography exhibitions at London's White Cube gallery, including one of Andreas Gursky's large-scale works. 'Modern prints are more stable but should stìll be treated with respect and expert advìce should be sought. The problem lies with the amount of ultraviolet light prints are exposed to. This can degrade the chemicals
used to imprint the image on to the photographic paper.'
Publication: Design Week
Date: January 2008
Download PDF
Product Placement
Large prints or small? Simple black frames or lightboxes? Spotlights for drama or subtle illumination to lose shadows? Dominic Lutyens discovers that there's more to the art of photographic display than meets the eye.
Since Photography is generally figurative you can often engage with it more easily and quickly than with, say, abstract art. This can mean that the images in exhibitions are often so engrossing that you may not pay much attention to how they are dìsplayed. Yet, it's a highly considered process. Requiring careful lighting to avoid glare and shrewd design to sustain the dramatic ambience of the collection, displaying photography has its challenges. And the practice can be subjective. Rather like typography, hanging can be less about precise mathematics than about seeing how things look best visually or
intuitively. Designers and curators also need to work within the parameters of a room's architecture or make the best of its limitations and quirks.
Lìghting is also a major consideration, a side issue of thìs being conservation.'With old prints, light needs to be kept within strict limits due to the fragile nature of materials used in the past,' says Douglas James of lighting consultancy Mindseye, which has desìgned the lighting for photography exhibitions at London's White Cube gallery, including one of Andreas Gursky's large-scale works. 'Modern prints are more stable but should stìll be treated with respect and expert advìce should be sought. The problem lies with the amount of ultraviolet light prints are exposed to. This can degrade the chemicals
used to imprint the image on to the photographic paper.'
