Dawning of a New Age of Digital Photography at AIPAD Show
by LOUISE LEVATHES, April 16, 2013
“I think Damion Berger’s dramatic fireworks pictures are some of the most exciting in the show,” New York dealer William Floyd who was at the fair shopping for clients.
Berger, a British photographer, who was once an assistant to fashion photographer Helmut Newton, has been working for several years on a series of fireworks celebrations from around the world he calls Black Powder. He uses a large format camera, long exposures, and shifts the image in and out of focus. He digitally creates photographs from negatives by printing a facsimile enlargement of exposed film. The result is a kind of visual poetry in black and white of fiery trajectories and tumbling embers, some more abstract than others, with no reference to place. Black night is rendered white; the white fireworks explosions are black, just the opposite of reality—so one would never actually see in the real world the dynamic images Berger has created.