Benjamin Stezaker

The ‘Long Exposures’ are a series of found sun-faded, cloth-covered hardback books collected over the last year, in which the ghost images of adjacent books or book ends have left their imprint as silhouettes. As the books are arranged and rearranged on bookshelves over years, a series of multiple exposures to ambient light create geometric collages of superimposed images of what has been. In a way, these are unintentional ready-made photographs which have been developed (without the human hand) over decades of sunlight exposure. Unlike most photographic processes where light creates darkness on sensitised paper, the light is removing the colour/ pigment and leaving an image of what was once present: light creating an image of light.

One piece in the series stands alone. Rather than being an image of a series of other books and objects, it is an image made through the dust cover of the book itself. The dust cover has acted as an intermediary negative and over time an inversion of the cover photograph has been imprinted onto the book cloth in negative.

Through conversation on the project with Fraser Carr Miles at Bracken Books, I was introduced to a particular discontinued coloured card stock used for book covers. Fraser had had problems with it fading extremely quickly to short term light exposure. This gave me the idea of producing an image in the same manner and then allowing it to disappear with time.
I had taken a series of images of ‘Passages’ and apertures at The Crypt gallery during a residency there. This was because some of the ‘Long Exposure’ shadow imprints I had collected reminded me of doors and windows. I thought it would be interesting to use these as acetate positives to exposure onto this card. I left them outside in the Farm Mews for the two-week duration of the residency. My plan is to then do an exhibition that will stage their disappearance.

Long Exposure (2025) x cm Framed sun faded book




Fresh Salad X The farm solo show install.