Photographing Drawings

– Jesper Authen

At Drawing Matter, we have a rule that when a new object enters the collection, it must be photographed and published within a month. With our capable photographer and her fancy equipment still in Somerset, we needed to find other ways of documenting new additions to the collection. We tried laying the drawings on the floor, gathering all the lamps in the office (or waiting for direct sunlight to come through the window), and standing precariously on a stool. The results required lots of adjusting, de-warping and cropping, leaving the photographs overcooked and chillingly immaterial.

When Peter Wilson’s enchanting curtain drawings arrived at the archive in London, they necessitated a new approach. Any light directed at the drawing reflected off the graphite and flattened its softness and subtlety. It also felt slightly violent, like forcing the drawing to pose for a passport photo or an uncomfortable dental X-ray. To remedy this, I positioned the camera directly above the drawing, turned off all the lights, set the exposure time to 30 seconds, and fired the shutter.

The ensuing image emerged through a process of looking rather than documenting; it felt less like I was harvesting data from the drawing, and more that the drawing’s own luminosity was appearing to me. Like when photographing stars and galaxies, the image reveals what is there but would otherwise remain unseen without careful calibration and slow attention. Shadows, lines, and folds gently presented themselves out of the darkness, and the drawing’s thing-ness was preserved on equal terms with its content. 

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Jesper Authen is Collections Manager at Drawing Matter.