Sophie Benson: Vanishing Points

Looking at images of bleak winter spaces we are imaginatively transported there, shivering as we feel the cold and in doing so we are entering that world of overwhelming infinity familiar in the work of Friedrich and Turner. More recent exponents of the Romantic Sublime include Rothko and the contemporary Norwegian, Ørnulf Opdahl, who both in their different ways present us with visions of man’s vulnerability and mortality.

Many people when confronted with Sophie Benson’s images will compare them with daguerreotypes, those early 19th century photographs which, even when developed, seem as provisional as condensation on a window pane. Images almost suspended in time appear as floating particles of pigment and as frozen relics of a world that is disappearing. Time suspended, time recovered and an elegiac sense of transience clearly impel her works.