Photographic realism, camera-less photography and the representation of the feminine: The work of Floris Neusüss

Abstract

This article will examine claims that photography can reveal truths about the world with a particular emphasis on camera-less techniques, their claim to realism and their utilization in both late nineteenth-century science and contemporary art photography. I will critique the late twentieth-century work of Floris Neusüss, whose photograms of the unclothed female form were exhibited in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2010. It will be argued that the photogram slips the grasp of contemporary gender analysis within visual culture, despite the camera-less process’s associations with a tactful, scientific truth. Understood through their psychoanalytic subtext, Neussus’s images are revealed as compliant with well-worn clichés of female passivity, both in what they represent and in the singularity of their method of production.