Shadow Portraits

Shadow Portraits, fumage, flame, and gas burner on 22 gauge copper plate 12 x 16 inches (each), image credit Ashish, courtesy Dr Bhai Daji Lad Museum, Mmbai 2024

Copper has perhaps a longer history than most realise. Most metals on Earth have an extra-terrestrial origin and astronomers now believe that much of the copper on Earth was forged in very massive stars. Four and a half billion years ago, Earth inherited some of this copper. Shadow Portraits, Sol Drawings and Skywatch offer a counterpoint to the film One Hundred Thousand Suns which is thick with history, research and time.

Drawing from images taken during eclipse chases over the past 10 years, Shadow Portraits are intimate portraits of eclipses, past and those yet to come, rendered in copper and fumage or the impressions made by candle smoke. The Sol Drawings look closer and more deeply. Inspired by images of sun spots and other solar phenomena, Devasher transforms the surface of these paper-thin copper sheets through interventions like acid washing, embossing, and fumage.

Shadow Portraits, fumage, flame, and gas burner on 22 gauge copper plate 6 x 16 inches (each) 2024