Garry Fabian Miller: The Colours

There is something strikingly elemental about Garry Fabian Miller’s practice. Fascinated by the photographic process, Miller has received acclaim for his investigations into the possibilities of camera-less photography – an intrigue that reduces his art to explorations of the interaction of light and light-sensitive paper. Working with filters, liquids and frames, Miller’s one-off prints reduce light and colour into bright, bold images. Unusually, great pleasure is found in the knowledge and consideration of the artist’s process. For these prints spark notions of essence, value and alchemy – terms associated with the history of photography’s science, that have been coined in the face of the encroaching digital age.

Alongside a selection of small-scale works from series’ Year One and Year Two – photographs that comprise a pattern book of experimental prints produced methodically over two years of intense studio-based practice – are a selection of new works that embrace digital processes. Continuing his play with light in the darkroom, Miller now compliments the intense nature of this elemental source by scanning the images, and utilising current printing technologies. It is therefore an intriguing meld of the old with the new that has produced these bright lacquered images. Trapped beneath veneers of Perspex, these deep, vast pools of colour take on a strange, almost sculptural quality unbeknown to their Cibachrome ancestors.

Although this is an exhibition for those with an interest in process, draughtsmanship and the history of photography, Miller’s tentative digital advances also bring issues regarding finite materials and obsolete technologies, sharply into focus.

Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 30 Jan