Macfarlane, S., 2023.

It's Dark Without, It's Light Within

Artist Siân Macfarlane has undertaken a period of research into his work and relationship to Wolverhampton, funded by the Arts Council. Through research in the archives of Wolverhampton and the Victoria & Albert Museum, which houses a number of his prints and glass negatives from the Royal Photographic Society collection, she has been exploring the historical processes that Rejlander used in his work, including wet plate collodion, as well as related practices within analogue photography. This research has been the starting point for her own photographic work in response to Rejlander's imagery, photographing the people who contribute to the creative life of the city.

The exhibition, comprising of prints and ephemera, will offer an exploration of Rejlander's visual practice, the photographic practices he engaged in, and the recurrent motifs to be found in his plates and prints. These visual ideas are invoked in the present, through re-staging and re-enactment of the photographs, with an exploration of the places of Wolverhampton where he made these images.