Surface Matters – Textures of Time
An exhibition of platinum/palladium and photogravure prints
This exhibition revisits and reaffirms the historical and material significance of photographic processes rooted in the earliest aspirations of photography as a fine art. Surface Matters – Prospects of People and Places reflects not only on the enduring power of hand-crafted image-making but also on the foundational role that The Camera Club played in fostering experimental and expressive photography over a century ago.
The Camera Club, established in 1885, quickly became a hub for innovation and artistic debate. Among its most influential early moments was a presentation by William Willis, the inventor of the platinum printing process. His visit helped spark widespread interest in the method, particularly among those seeking an alternative to the sharper, colder finishes of silver-based prints. Platinum—and its later development, palladium—offered an extended tonal range, a softer aesthetic, and exceptional archival permanence.
It was within this environment that, in 1892, the Linked Ring Brotherhood was founded at a Club meeting. The Brotherhood—whose members included some of the most progressive photographic minds of the era—sought to distinguish artistic photography from its scientific and commercial applications. Their commitment to visual poetry, mood, and the handmade image found a perfect match in the photogravure process, known for its velvety blacks and ability to render subtle tonal transitions. Together, these processes formed the backbone of a movement that treated photographic prints not as transparent carriers of information, but as surfaces rich with feeling, crafted through care and intention.
Surface Matters honours that tradition by returning to these slow, meticulous methods. Featuring contemporary platinum/palladium and photogravure prints, the exhibition explores how materiality—both photographic and physical—can deepen our engagement with time, memory, and the emotional tenor of place and portraiture.
The works presented span close-up human portraits and desolate natural landscapes, exploring parallels between skin and stone, weathered by time and environment. The textured surfaces of aged faces and volcanic terrain reveal themselves through the tactile richness of these analogue processes. These prints resist the glossy finish and smoothly clean nature of digital imagery. Instead, they stand as objects—deliberate and meditative.
By emphasizing surface, the exhibition underscores the photograph as a physical artifact, not just a window onto the world but a skin in itself—bearing marks, tones, and textures that contribute to its meaning. The labour-intensive processes echo the passage of time embedded within the imagery, reinforcing themes of solitude, endurance, and transformation.
In re-engaging with historical methods and aligning them with contemporary sensibilities, Surface Matters draws a line between past and present, showing that the spirit of artistic photography—nurtured within the very walls of The Camera Club—continues to evolve, grounded in material presence and emotional depth.
The author:
Dr Peter Moseley is an experienced photographer and printmaker using the techniques and processes of the nineteenth century, including photogravure, platinum, salt and albumen, carbon transfer, kallitype, collotype and cyanotype printing. He specialises in combining digital and analogue technologies and has exhibition entries shown at national and regional galleries, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Society of Printmakers Painters, the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists and the Royal West of England Academy.
He is an experienced and qualified teacher and has taught photography/printmaking workshops at universities, colleges and print centres in the UK and in Russia and China. He has workshop and print-making facilities in Kingston and regularly teaches in London at Lux Darkroom. Peter prints photogravure and platinum/palladium editions for artists. He has had four solo shows of portraiture - ‘Take Five’, ‘Volte Face’, ‘A Matter of no Indifference’ and ‘Dermis’ and participated in a number of group shows.
Peter has an MA in Printmaking from the University of Brighton and has recently completed a Visiting Research Fellowship at the Centre for Print Research, University of the West of England, where he was awarded his PhD. His research interests including: the history, techniques and practice of nineteenth photographic and photo-mechanical printing processes; the application of digital and inkjet technologies to early contact printing processes; and the development of the craft and techniques of photogravure and carbon transfer printing and the use of gelatine/colloidal matrices.
Peter Moseley
07590337377
moseley@btinternet.com