A Little Bit of Magic Realised: Susan Derges and Garry Fabian Miller @ Ingleby Gallery

In the words of photographer Matt Hardy, "Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph."

Today’s world is a visual minefield. Our minds are bombarded with JPEGs. We are slaves to the digital image. Everybody owns a camera phone or a mini digital camera, and we are in an age where it is almost impossible to escape the voyeuristic lens of a camera at some point during the day. Hard-drives the world over are packed to the gunwales with thoughtless snaps destined never to enter the world of printed matter, but incessantly vying for our attention in cyber-space.

A Little Bit of Magic Realised, the title taken from a quote by the early pioneer of photography William Henry Fox Talbot, is a fascinating exhibition that definitely reclaims photography to the realms of art. It invites you to take a step back from the quick fix lifestyle and once again composes the beauty of the world in pictorial form… And you won’t find a camera in sight. The exhibition focuses on two contemporary ‘photographers’, Susan Derges and Garry Fabian Miller, and their experiments with camera-less photography. Their works are placed in the context of early historical photographic experiments, exhibited alongside works by Fox Talbot and another early photographer Anna Atkins. The exhibition is running in conjunction with the V&A’s highly successful show, Shadow Catchers, in London and gives you a chance to explore the work of Derges and Miller's wider career.

Derges and Miller’s light experiments are mesmerising and at times hypnotic. From the dreamlike seas, ghostly moons and bright block colours floating on deep black backgrounds, to the captivating life cycle of frogs, it is clear to see that these are two of the most exciting artists working within the photographic medium today. [Marcus Pibworth]