Exhibition Concept
Cloud Album Photographs From The Archive Of Modern Conflict Curated by Luce Lebart and Timothy Prus. Circulated by The Polygon Gallery in partnership with the Archive of Modern Conflict. Texts by Luce Lebart. Installation photographs: The Polygon Gallery. At the dawn of photography, when photographs required long exposures, images of clouds were almost impossible. It wasn’t until the second half of the 19th century, with improvements in photographic acumen and technology, that photographers could actively begin to capture the infinite variability of clouds. So began, in the 1880s, an avid fixation with the subject, an affinity that has since generated innumerable images — often for scientific uses, such as developing an international naming system or visualizing cloud movement on a planetary scale, and also for limitless documentary and artistic purposes.
Above: Jean Vincent, Cumulus isolé, from Album de Nuages, Belgium, silver gelatin print, 1894-1940.
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