Michael Jackson
Further images
“I love the idea of a darkroom being a magical place full of secrets and sweat.
When you are shut in there you are cut off from the world, with just your mind. The luminogram process shows one’s joy at how silver gelatin paper changes - it embraces the joy of the natural world - it works at the same level as a sunset - nature and the physical world changing at a chemical level to produce something that, along with the control of specific thought and decisions makes us see the beauty of science. It is a science, albeit an old science, that lets us display what we are, our decisions, our likes - our guided thoughts.” - Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson (b.1966) is an experimental photographer based in North Dorset, England. He studied art at West Dean College in Sussex, then apprenticed under landscape painter Christopher W Baker and later discovered his passion for photography. He moved away from working with traditional camera techniques in 2015 and is currently progressing the Luminogram process into new directions in which he has become regarded as a leading practitioner.
His work has been exhibited internationally and is part of various private and museum collections including The National Art Gallery in Washington, USA.
Michael Jackson's Luminograms are a very special piece of photographic art. Not a photograph in itself but a creative medium of its own. Each one is meticulously crafted by Michael in his darkroom. There are many structured stages to go through before the photographic paper can be hand developed and permanently fixed. Once Michael is happy with a finished Luminogram print it's then toned in Selenium, which not only intensifies the prints tonality, but also increases the prints archival quality. Traditional photographic darkroom printing techniques have an unquestionable pedigree when it comes to the life expectancy of a photograph.
Each Luminogram is unique and only one silver gelatin print is produced of each image.
The images reveal themselves with a 3D quality; viewed in the flesh the abstracted surreal forms within the paper come alive to the viewer.
MICHAEL G JACKSON - Artist page
"Far from being an exercise in nostalgia, this analogue technique offers Jackson, as it does other artists at the cutting edge of this art movement, a path to the future." - The Financial Times
