Adam Fuss has been exploring the subject of water for more than thirty years and is perhaps best known for life-size photograms of this essential element. Here for the first time is a book dedicated solely to the theme of water in Fuss’s oeuvre. Included here are pictures that are now iconic in the history of contemporary photography, such as the swimming snakes, the splashing newborn baby, and Fuss’s studies of concentric circles created by drops. Alongside these are many unpublished images.

The primary influence for Fuss is the personal observation of nature – nature being the underlying subject of all his work. The pictures in this volume were chosen by the artist and are the direct manifestations of the interaction of water and light. Fuss experiments with unconventional photographic processes and eventually abandoned the camera altogether, by proceeding to a reinterpretation of photography’s earliest techniques, particularly the camera-less methods of the daguerreotype and photogram. Fuss believes that in order for any photographic technique to work, it should be personalized and transfigured into a greater metaphor, engaging processes that take place in the natural world.
The scientific precision with which he renders his subject using photographic materials achieves greater acuity and distinctiveness than one could achieve with a camera and traditional photo-based techniques.

His deliberate distillation of the essence of photography – a flash of light on a sensitized surface – emphasizes themes of transformation and perception. Intentionally avoiding the detailed clarity of traditional photography, Fuss’s works are ghostly manifestations of light and shadow.