Lost Art: rayographs of tree silhouettes and the night sky

I first saw these large (about 2 metres tall?) photographs of nightscapes in a gallery around London’s Mayfair, I reckon around 2001-2003? I somehow think it might have been a couple who worked together (or was that the gallery? It’s all so hazy…) or a woman artist. The photographs are not actual photographs, but rather rayographs made in forests at dusk, maybe exposing the paper underwater, and that created the ripples on the image? Certainly not digital.

Atmospherically, they were rich and sultry, and a little bit cold. Not quite black and white, but velvety. Very dark. The imagery was almost surreal because of the reflections in the water, and plants in it, of the night sky. They were displayed as they are, with no frame or glass.

I think then saw them again in an art fair in the Royal Academy, where Haunch of Venison now sits. Which fair was that, then? There’s so many… Possibly a photography fair, there were some Wolfgang Tillmans’ abstracts that intrigued me. It’s really interesting to try to remember. I have to write it down, in case I forget this much!