Independent Writer, Researcher & Curator 
Thomas Mailaender:
Ultraviolet


Paris Photo, Grand Palais, Paris
10 – 13 November 2016

Role:
Exhibition Coordinator & Co-curator


Team:
Marisa Bellani, Gallery Director
Jennifer Angus, Communications Coordinator

Roman Road is pleased to be participating at Paris Photo this year with a solo booth by Thomas Mailaender entitled Ultraviolet. Bringing together two well-known series by the artist – Illustrated People (2013) and Cyanotypes (2013 – present) – our booth explores Mailaender’s innovative approaches to photography and the possibilities of printing with ultraviolet light.

Mailaender’s Illustrated People was developed in collaboration with The Archive of Modern Conflict (AMC), London – a collection that comprises photographic documents from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and houses over four million amateur and professional photographs. Focusing on photographs from WWII, he positioned original negatives upon the bodies of volunteers he recruited and sat them under a powerful UV lamp until a positive image was revealed. The resulting photographs of these performances uncover the archived images pronounced through patches of bright red, sunburnt skin.

Together with his Illustrated People works, our booth presents a varied collection of Mailaender’s unique Cyanotypes. These blue-hued photographs, also made through exposure to ultraviolet light, manifest images taken from the artist’s ‘Fun Archive’: a personal collection of bizarre and anonymous pictures gleaned from the Internet. Mounted upon plasterboards measuring 250 x 120 cm, his largest works feature found images that draw attention to the often-absurd nature of human behaviour today.