A Susan Derges photogram of water

The hauntingly beautiful images that make up the Shadowcatchers exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum are the kind of art that sears itself onto your memory for days afterwards. “What on earth is camera-less photography?” I hear you cry. Fear not dear reader, this isn’t some post-modern statement on photo trickery. It’s actually a relatively simple, and utterly beautiful form of art. Using light-sensitive materials, blurs of shadows and silhouettes are fixed onto light-sensitive surfaces and materials using stencils, water tanks, dye destruction prints, water-snakes, and simple photograms.

The exhibition is short enough that one can pore over every piece and finish satisfied, without having lost the will to live halfway round and had to have a nap on the floor to refuel (this is not something I have ever done. Ever). The pieces are the works of a handful of artists, a favourite of which is the German Floris Neusüss. His shadows of figures are so Peter-Pan-esque, as though a passer-by accidentally let go of their shadow and left it behind to be made into art. One in particular is especially clever: the shadow of a person reclining across a chair, displayed on the floor and with the chair placed on top of the piece – giving the effect that an invisible subject is actually present, her shadow the only giveaway.

Another of his works, ‘Gewitterbild, Kassel, 1984′, was created by leaving light-sensitive materials outside during a thunderstorm, and allowing the rain and lightening to make their own shapes on the paper. The result is what you might imagine if you translated the way a storm sounds into a visual piece.

The movement in Adam Fuss’s work is equally breathtaking, the shapes breaking into life before my eyes as though the flock of doves is literally taking flight.

“It’s almost spiritual, isn’t it?” whispers Sophie, one of the curates, as my mind attempts (and struggles) to take in the sheer beauty of Susan Derges’ photograms of water. And she’s right; I find my mind meditating on creation and its source, the purpose and point of natural beauty, the reason for a flock of doves to be so spectacular. Never has photography been this thought-provoking for me.

You might choose to avoid the film that assaults the dreamlike atmosphere halfway round the maze.; it’s very informative but it does catapult your mind from fairytale wonderment to dream-crushing reality as it goes over (in some detail) the processes of how the pieces are made. It’s duller than it sounds, and besides, can be found on the V&A website.

And if you can, do try and go on a Friday evening when a live quartet plays in the grand hall and you can (if you wish) put on a cocktail dress and nobody will bat an eyelid.

‘Shadowcatchers’ runs at the Victoria & Albert Museum until 20th February 2011. More information is available on the V&A’s website.

Floris Neusüss 'Untitled, (Körperfotogramm), Kassel, 1967'. Gelatin-silver print photogram.