Untitled, 1987
Photographer Adam Fuss places living and non-living objects, including balloons, flowers, water, babies, animal entrails, and skulls, directly onto Cibachrome paper and exposes them to light, making photograms that explore imperfection, intimacy, nostalgia, and the passage of time. In the 2010 series “Home and the World,” Fuss’s gelatin silver print photograms and large-scale daguerreotypes record groupings of live snakes on stained mattresses and a close up of a vagina. Snakes and Ladders (a Jain morality-teaching tool developed in India during the 16th century), ancient mythology, and the work of social symbolism scholar Carl Schuster all inform Fuss’s poetic imagery.