Susan Derges

Susan Derges (born 1955) is a British photographic artist living and working in Devon. She specialises in camera-less photographic processes, most often working with natural landscapes. She has exhibited extensively in Europe, America and Japan and her works are in several important museum collections.

Derges' work is held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She has received an Honorary Fellowship of The Royal Photographic Society.

Biography Derges was born in London in 1955. Having studied basic theoretical physics, she draws playfully on certain scientific theories in her artworks, such as the notion that in physics the observer's decision affects what is observed. She began her artistic career as a painter working in London and Berlin in the 1970s, studying painting at the Chelsea College of Art and Design from 1973 to 1976 and at the Slade School of Art from 1977 to 1979. She moved to Japan in 1980, where she turned to certain early photographic processes, camera-less photography—exposing images directly onto photographic paper. JVC Award (1984) and carrying out postgraduate research at Tsukuba University. From 1986 to 1991 Derges lived in London, moving to Dartmoor, Devon in 1992. In 1993 she received a South West Arts Award and was appointed Lecturer in Media Arts at the University of Plymouth, Plymouth. From 1997 to 1999 she was an external examiner for the BA in Fine Art: Photography at Middlesex University.

Work Derges's 1991 series The Observer and the Observed explored the relationship between object and viewer, and art and science. She turned to camera-less photography after experiencing frustration at the way "the camera always separates the subject from the viewer". Much of her subsequent work has dealt with this relationship – of separation and connectedness with the natural world. In Derges' photography, nature imprints patterns and rhythms of motion, growth and form directly on the light-sensitive surface of the photographic emulsion, such as falling water drops, busy honeycombs, and vessels of germinating toad's eggs.

Her images are often beautiful, conjuring metaphysical and metaphorical layers of meaning. Derges has said that ideas propelling her projects were "about becoming close to the element of the river, as a metaphor of immersion and participation." Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL Metropolitan Museum, New York Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Awards 2014: Honorary Fellowship of The Royal Photographic Society

2015 Centenary Medal of The Royal Photographic Society in recognition of outstanding contribution to the art of photography.

Publications River Taw. London: Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art, 1997. . Woman Thinking River. San Francisco: Fraenkel Gallery; New York: Danziger Gallery, 1999. . Liquid Form, 1985–99. London: Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art, 1999. . With an essay by Martin Kemp. Kingswood. Maidstone, Kent: Photoworks, 2000. . Elemental. Göttingen: Steidl, 2010. . Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography, Victoria & Albert Museum/Merrell, London, 2012.