Susan Derges B.1955

Susan Derges, (English, born 1955) is a photographic artist, specialising in camera-less photographic processes, most often working with natural landscapes. She has exhibited extensively in Europe, America and Japan and her works are in several important museum collections. Derges first experimented with cameraless photography while living in Japan. Her 1985 work Chladni Figures was produced by sprinkling carborundum powder directly onto photographic emulsion where it was exposed to sound wavesat different frequencies (see Ernst Chladni), creating ghostly black and white images of natural order and chaos. For her 1991 series The Observer and the Observed Derges explored the interdependence of viewer and object - creating images appearing as droplets of water containing faces, while simultaneously showing her own face with small droplets suspended in her view. For the 1997 River Taw series she worked at night, placing photographic paper on the river bed and allowing the images to be exposed through ambient light, aided by the use of a flash gun. Her technique involved a very direct and unmediated physical relationship with the landscape, while her Under The Moon series involved working with photographs of the moon and combining these with water and branch patterns exposed to sound vibrations in the darkroom. Her images, though based upon the capturing of external natural realities, take on a metaphorical dimension that echo the inner life of the unconscious and imaginative. "Series such as River Taw and Under The Moon ...reflect a human scale, where the body is directly referenced in the long, thin vertical format of the prints. The format deliberately counteracts any sense of looking through an aperture but rather suggests a more direct relationship, or experience of immersion in the image" Susan Derges, Interview, 2006 Biography 1955 Born, London 1973-76 Chelsea School of Art, London (BA Hons) Painting 1976-77 British Council/DAAD Scholarship to Berlin 1977-79 Postgraduate studies, Slade School of Fine Art, London 1979 Boise Travel Scholarship to Holland 1982-83 Postgraduate Research Tsukuba University , Japan 1981-85 Living and working in Japan 1986-91 Living and working in London 1992 Living and working in Dartmoor, Devon 1993-98 Lecturer, Media Arts, University of Plymouth , Exeter 1997 Visiting Lecturer/Guest Speaker, Mills College , Oakland , California 1997-99 External Examiner BA Fine Art/ Photography, Middlesex University Awards 1981-82 Rotary Foundation Award , Japan 1984 JVC Award , Japan 1993 South West Arts Major Award Collections Arts Council of England Victoria & Albert Museum , London National Museum of Film, Photography and Television, Bradford Arnolfini Trust, Bristol Dorset County Hospital Kunstlerhaus Bethanien , Berlin Museum of Fine Arts Boston The Art Institute of Chicago Museum of Fine Arts Houston Metropolitan Museum of Art , New York San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Saibu Gas Museum , Fukuoka The Hara Art Museum , Tokyo British Airways Citibank Private Bank Collection, London Conoco Ltd, London Deutsche Bank Man Group plc., London Hess Collection Napa , Bern , London NatWest Group, London Texaco Plc, London

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