I’m delighted to be showing work with Elijah Wheat Showroom once more in PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai, showing my work for the first time in China.
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Elijah Wheat Showroom anticipates curiosity, wonder and reverie, presenting the unique works of three USA based experimental photographers: Jon Verney, Rhiannon Adam & Liz Nielsen at PHOTOFAIRS: Shanghai 2024. Each artistic photographer is bending the constructs of what photography can be, and what can be executed with a Polaroid camera, or entirely without.

Beginning with Jon Verney’s Decomposites, the remarkable micro-world of a corroded Polaroid from 70’s deadstock, transforms into a macro landscape, inviting a viewer to explore the details of a handmade negative, and a remarkably focused abstract image. Using color fields from other self-produced negatives. Verney’s archival pigment prints center on pursuing moments of wonder. With equal emphasis on science and magic, the creative practice is driven by curiosity and haptic experimentation. He uses unique, alternative photo processes to explore the liminal theme of phase transitions–how matter shifts from one state of being to another–and how these changes express themselves visually.

Rhiannon Adam, an explorer, and also an experimental photographer, travels perpetually, rarely settling down to rest. Adam’s work is centered on research-based, long-form, social documentary projects that make use of analogue photographic processes and archive materials, as well as her on-going obsession with Polaroid and the materiality of the photographic image. The singular work that we exhibit is an editioned print, yet a personal one. The Polaroid is shot on film, 11 years out of date (on deadstock beta test film. The image relates to her childhood nostalgia (fading through the cracked imperfections) of analogue material. It's a stripping away of any signs of when it was shot; It's a way for her to capture the memories she missed (she grew up on a small boat with parents sailing the globe until age 15) by replacing them with someone else’s. Elijah Wheat presented Adam's otherworldly unique analogue montages of Polaroid photo emulsion lifts at the inaugural PHOTOFAIRS, NYC in 2023. She is an expert on Polaroid history and experimental techniques and has authored an exhaustive resource on instant photography, Polaroid: The Missing Manual (Thames & Hudson, 2017, reprinted 2022).

Liz Nielsen brings her most recent camera less unique analogue work to Shanghai, on varied light sensitive materials. One, the traditional FujiFlex, and the other, the film-like transparent FujiClear. Another experimental photographer, Nielsen refers to themselves as a “Light Painter.” With this technique, Nielsen references the painting canon of a still life, and landscape, only future-forward and placed within a cosmic setting (and all that lies in between). The artist’s subjects float location-less, without scale, harnessing the great possibility of life beyond carbon forms and mingling with the presence of emotive vibrating light. Aiming for a quantum vision with a quantum medium, Nielsen’s illustrative work is intended to both be and not be at the same time. The limitless possibilities of capturing a most alive still life, or landscape, creates captured apparitions of light at a macro scale, however, microcosmically is placed within us too.

All of these artists works center on pursuing moments of wonder, offering an experimental and vibrantly colorful analogue edge. We are thrilled to bring and hold space for this his fantastical, otherworldly wonder-filled experimental photography to Shanghai, China.
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PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai is Asia Pacific’s leading fair dedicated to photo-based and digital artworks. It was established in 2014 in response to growing interest and demand for collecting photography in the region. Held annually, the Fair is a fine arts showcase embracing conceptual and experimental practices alongside the work of modern masters and contemporary talents. It acts as a site for discovery, presenting galleries and artists working at the forefront of the medium. Complemented by vibrant public, VIP and satellite events programs, the Fair brings together museums and galleries from Shanghai and across China in a celebration of the best in photography from Asia Pacific and around the world.