KY LEWIS
Cluster Exhibitor | Photography & Print Fair 2022
The Lighthouse | 2022
Ky Lewis is an artist living and making work in South London. Spending time in the landscape, her love of the environment is evident in her work and informs her current practice.
A pictorialist at heart the work centres on the land, responding in a site specific way. Pinhole and camera-less methods are at the core of her practice with a slow considered approach to the making of photos suffused with emotion, history and nostalgia, the methodical approach allowing valuable time in the land.
Breathe#6 | 2022
Breathe#27 | 2022
She has exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo exhibitions recently in Poland and numerous group exhibitions from New York to Tokyo. Work has been published in everything from limited edition photography magazines, such as Seities, The Hand and Analog Forever magazine to ‘How To’ manuals such as Jill Enfield’s Guide to Alternative Photographic Processes, and Thames and Hudson’s Experimental Photography, a Handbook of Techniques. Recently she has received awards and honourable mentions from TIFA, Julia Margaret Cameron Awards, and Denis Roussel(Rfotofolio).
Breathe#18 | 2022
Breathe#23 | 2022
The Shimmer | 2022
AfterTheStorm | 2021
DownByTheSwale | 2021
“Christopher James said of her work, ”... If I came across your work in a museum I would sit down on a bench and savour it””
AfterTheDeluge | 2021
TheLighthouse | 2022
Ky’s work is rooted in the land, subjects are both expansive and minute, the photographs exude the essence of their subject. When making her images it is a slow considered methodology. Her love for process and its complexity is at the core of her practice, from nascent idea to the final often unique series of prints.
After being on location she returns to her ‘darkshed’ in South London, listening to a background of music and local wildlife.
The processes and exposure methods vary according to the project. They can be: pinhole, camera-less, large format, chromoskedasik, lumen, chemigram etc. She has been working in an experimental manner for many years, preferring basic cameras most of which are lensless, making a lot of them from waste items or repurposing old cameras.
The Series “Breathe” concerns London’s Urban Forest, ‘The Canopy’ essential for bio-diversity, cleansing the air, carbon storage, temperature control and well being, it portrays the importance and value of the urban forest. The timing of this series ever more important due to the pandemic, the relevance and metaphor contained within each image in relation to its visual analogy to lungs and deprivation of oxygen caused by the loss of both. Made using a 10x8” Intrepid pinhole camera with X-Ray film, the unique chromoskedasik silver gelatine prints show shifts in colour, the structure of the silver halides changed by the chemical affect on the PH values, alluding to atmospheric changes.
The “Ephemeral Lumen Moth I_IV was a series first created 10 years ago using the Lumen process, a camera-less technique using silver gelatine paper, exposed for an inordinate length of time. Capturing the essence and lightness of the moth, the series of four prints have a timeless quality, redolent of historic images.