Aperture is pleased to release this limited-edition print by David Benjamin Sherry. Death Valley, California, 2012, is part of a more extensive series, Pink Genesis, comprised of photograms. Without the use of a camera, throughout this captivating suite of images, Sherry ventures closer to photography’s earliest history.

“My photograms can be divided into two basic types: precise geometric abstractions and freer, improvisational compositions in which my body appears as the subject.”
–– David Benjamin Sherry

Sherry is a magician of the darkroom. Celebrated for his use of vivid color and his skill with traditional analog photographic techniques, he has established himself as a leading voice in contemporary photography. His work has often examined the monumental landscapes of the American West and the environmental challenges the region faces.

Pink Genesis introduces Sherry’s equally intriguing but lesser-known series of striking, large-scale, cameraless color photograms, laboriously made by hand in the darkroom. Using cardboard masks to create mesmerizing geometric forms and incorporating his own body into the images, Sherry actively references histories of photography, as well as artists such as Josef Albers and Robert Rauschenberg, captivating viewers with a fresh way of seeing.

The series, inspired by James Bidgood’s 1971 cult film Pink Narcissus, almost entirely shot within Bidgood’s New York apartment, explores how “a small interior space—specifically, a space of queer imagination—can be a site of fantasy and possibility,” as Lucy Gallun, associate curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, states in her essay for the book. For Sherry, the private, contemplative space of the darkroom serves as a space to think through the intersections of identity, abstraction, and the meditative possibilities of monochrome.