ORLANDO, FL.- UCF Art Gallery presents Out of Darkness: The Contemporary Revival of Early Photography. While digital photography technology improves at an exponential rate, a group of well-known contemporary artists are looking to the techniques of photography’s dawn for inspiration. Out of Darkness: The Contemporary Revival of Early Photography brings together the work of 11 cutting-edge photographers who are working with archaic media—Chuck Close, Sally Mann, Jerry Spangnoli and Abelardo Morell, among them.

Out of Darkness: The Contemporary Revival of Early Photography will be on exhibit from October 26 through December 7 at the University of Central Florida Art Gallery in Orlando. Curators for the exhibition are Theo Lotz, UCF Art Gallery Director and E. Brady Robinson, Assistant Professor at UCF.

Contemporary photographers now have access to nearly instantaneous image capture and reproduction. The tools and speed of digital photography reflect a culture that demands immediate gratification and instant access.

This exhibition, in contrast, examines contemporary photographers who choose to have direct contact with the photographic process in its most basic chemical and alchemical form. Instead of working with current digital technology, these photographers have chosen to revive archaic techniques—processes that are time-consuming, basic, and tactile. A number of Contemporary Art’s most influential artists are reviving by-gone photographic processes—daguerreotypes, cyanotypes, pinhole cameras, and tintypes, to name a few—to express their vision. Some of the photographers included in the exhibition work within the familiar genres of portraiture, landscape and figure while others create uniquely personal worlds. This exhibition explores the motivations behind reviving an antiquated process in a technologically advanced time. And more importantly, it raises the question of what do these processes tell us about our current culture when utilized by contemporary artists.