Alison Rossiter: Semblance @ Yossi Milo

JTF (just the facts): A total of 34 photographic works, framed in white and unmatted, and hung against white walls in the East, West, and Jewel Box galleries, and above the reception desk. (Installation shots below.)

 

The following works are included in the show:

• 5 gelatin silver prints, 2024, 2025, sized roughly 5×7, 11×9, 11×14 inches, unique
• 7 sets of 2 gelatin silver prints, 2025, sized roughly 7×10, 10×16, 13×7, 17×15 inches (overall), unique
• 2 sets of 3 gelatin silver prints, 2025, sized roughly 3×5, 5×8 inches (overall), unique
• 2 sets of 4 gelatin silver prints, 2023, 2025, sized roughly 15×13, 40×32 inches (overall), unique
• 1 set of 5 gelatin silver prints, 2022, sized roughly 16×22 inches (overall), unique
• 1 set of 6 gelatin silver prints, 2023, sized roughly 16×21 inches (overall), unique
• 2 sets of 9 gelatin silver prints, 2025, sized roughly 13×10, 17×10 inches (overall), unique
• 1 set of 12 gelatin silver prints, 2025, sized roughly 19×11 inches (overall), unique
• 7 sets of 16 gelatin silver prints, 2025, sized roughly 10×7, 17×13, 20×16, 24×16, 28×20 inches (overall), unique
• 6 daguerreotype plate and gelatin silver print, 2024, sized roughly 15×12 inches (overall), unique

 

Comments/Context: While it might seem surprising to those raised on the crisp screen-based perfections of digital photography, there was a time, particularly in early to mid 20th century black-and-white photography, that the artist’s choice of photographic paper was of significant importance. Artists in this era of gelatin silver were intently focused on the underlying properties of the available light sensitive papers: which were warmer or cooler in tone, which had more silver content, which handled deep blacks best, which had rough or smooth texture, and countless other technical details and aesthetic nuances based on the chemistries and processing approaches of different manufacturers. This paper variation led to subtle choices that artists could make when determining how to present their work, and ultimately to prints that could range from dully flat to sublimely astonishing simply based on which paper was used.

 

Like many products with expiration dates, these photographic papers are now far beyond their original manufacturer-approved “Best By” dates (some by more than a century), which of course leads to uncertainty about how these papers might actually function if they were used now. Could the original chemical recipes have become unstable over time? Depending on how the papers were packaged and saved, could traces of light or moisture have influenced the chemistries, leading to unexpected corrosion or decay? Or might the passing of time have somehow led to other visual effects and traces? Every rediscovered antique paper is like an unopened package, just waiting to reveal its secrets. 

 

These mysteries lie at the conceptual core of Alison Rossiter’s artistic practice. For the past several decades, Rossiter has been scavenging up expired photographic papers from all over the world and then transforming them into her own unique artworks. In some cases, this has simply involved processing the rare papers and letting the results speak for themselves, their unexpected nuances of color, surface, and texture creating worlds of tactile complexity; in others, she has used the controlled application of developers or the arrangement of processed and unprocessed papers into pairs, grids, and other geometric formations to tease out further layers of elemental aesthetics and visual resonances. Rossiter’s work is inherently a “photography about photography” exercise, but that nested conceptual framework doesn’t prevent her works from consistently delivering moments of understated grace and seductive elegance.

 

This is Rossiter’s fourth show with Yossi Milo, and we’ve been along for the artistic ride since the beginning (2020 reviewed here, 2015 reviewed here, and 2010 reviewed here), including the show that opened during the depths of the pandemic. As a result, many of the works in the front gallery spaces of her new show feel like the continued exploration of ideas Rossiter has played with previously. There is an extra large work that uses dark angles of developer to create wondrously mottled and clouded polygons that float in space. There are smaller works that pool poured developer to create dark hovering orbs (as paired semicircles mounted together), and that lay developer like a horizon line across papers filled with silvery pinprick spots like stars in the night sky. And still other works explore watery washes, step-wise progressions from light to dark, and subtle pairings that function like pedestals or plinths, with one rectangle of paper sculpturally sitting atop another. Many of these are themes that Rossiter has probed before, but she fundamentally has to respond to what the papers themselves offer and fit the artistic solution to the particular materials, even if that means returning to an approach that she has tried earlier.  It’s like paying appropriate respect to the ghosts of the past.

 

The works in the back gallery are more organized into discrete thematic projects, with multiple works made in essentially the same style or structure. One group comes from a new series titled “Daguerre, Baekeland”, referring to two critical figures in the history of photographic printing – Louis Daguerre (whose mid-19th century daguerreotypes introduced photography to many) and Leo Baekeland (whose late-19th century Velox paper broadened the reach of the medium). In each composition, an unsuccessful daguerreotype plate is matched with a sheet of Velox, creating a vertical stack of rectangles, one dark and one light. Up close, the nuances are subtle, with dark fogs, scratches, splotches, and gestural swirls above supported by elemental almost-white blocks (with hints of shading drifting in from the edges) below. While not exactly before and after pairings, the works do offer an essential progression or building of time, where the process of image making is becoming more predictable and repeatable.

 

The second group takes its inspiration from a 1911 work by Man Ray that was installed near the beginning of his 2009 exhibit at the Jewish Museum (and is part of the permanent collection at the Centre Pompidou in Paris). “Tapestry” is a gridded quilt-like textile work, made up of fabric samples from his family’s tailoring business; it’s a stuttering blocked work in shades of white, brown, and black, and from afar, it looks altogether modern, like an array of pixels. Armed with dozens of blocks of expired paper, Rossiter made her own versions of the tapestry, in grids of 9, 12, and 16 prints, the monochrome black and white examples looking like the on and off of computer bits, while grids with more intermediate colors of cream, yellow, tan, light brown, and dark brown become more warmly symphonic in their shifting patterns. These are the strongest works in the show, as they smartly build upward from the essence of the antique papers and processes, transforming the photographic raw material into richly complex grids that bring patina and touch to the rigid structure of Minimalism.

 

Rossiter’s work has always been rooted in the age old artistic questions of what materials to use and how to use them expressively. For Rossiter, photography is the central defining agent, where her own processes of finding and re-imagining allow her to blend chance and imperfection with intention, coming out on the other side with works that feel fresh and unexpected. She has creatively discovered a way to turn the “nothing” of expired papers into something, and that something has consistently leveraged a style of muted understatement that encourages patient nose-to-the-frame examination. At this level of active paying-attention engagement, the magic in her work can then reveal itself, where each seemingly insignificant square of humble historical paper turns out to carry multitudes.

 

Collector’s POV: The works in this show range in price from $8000 to $38000 each, depending on size and the number of prints included in the work. Rossiter’s work has little secondary market history at this point, so gallery retail remains the best option for those collectors interested in following up.