Posts tagged: Digital Photography

Mishka Henner is interested in making art that ‘challenges conventional perspectives and encourages viewers to reconsider their relationship with the world, technology, and the consequences of human activities’. He produces books, film, photographic and sculptural works, often repurposing imagery sourced online.

Selfie offers a different kind of self-portrait, using a highly reflective surface that acts like a black mirror. The camera has zoomed out far beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, allowing the viewer to simultaneously ‘see themselves, the world, and everything they’ve ever known, all in one frame’.

The work is inspired by a quote from Apollo 8 Astronaut Jim Lovell, seeing Earth on the first manned orbit around the moon in December 1968: “At one point I sighted the earth with my thumb – and my thumb from that distance fit over the entire planet. I realised how insignificant we all are if everything I’d ever known is behind my thumb.”

Henner was born in Brussels, Belgium and lives and works in Greater Manchester. He has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, and from 2023-2024 was artist in residence at the University of Salford’s Energy House 2.0 research facility, in partnership with the Art Collection, Open Eye Gallery, and Castlefield Gallery.

The image above is an install shot from the exhibition.

Photographs on this page courtesy of Sam Parker, UoS Art Collection Team Assistant

Darren Almond
Fullmoon @ Fukushima Bay (2006)
Digital Photography

Almond’s practice spans installation, film, sculpture and photography, considering themes of memory, sense of place, and the passing of time. His ongoing ‘Full Moon’ series captures the unique light and atmosphere during full moon lunar phases.

This image appears to be shot in the daylight, however this image along with many of Almond’s images are taken at night. Almond’s shutter stays open for 15 minutes or more to create imagery like this.

Seeking out striking and often remote geographical landscapes, from the Arctic Circle to the Nile (this image taken in Fukushima, Japan) the artist generates images using an exposure time of 15 minutes or more, creating a ghostly, ethereal effect. Almond’s work is ‘intentionally concerned with memory and chance, with mobilizing light and time, and, in the choice of locations – zones outside the urban, untouched by artificial lighting – continuing the legacy of Romantic painting’.

Almond was born in Wigan in 1971 and lives and works in London. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2005 and has exhibited at Tate Britain and the Berlin, Moscow and Venice art biennales. His work is in the collections of Tate, MOMA, and the Metropolitan Museum, New York. He is represented by White Cube.

The image above is an install shot from the exhibition.

Photographs on this page courtesy of Sam Parker, UoS Art Collection Team Assistant