Denis Brihat Pierre Cordier Jean-Pierre Sudre : A European experiment

The most evident aspect that the photographic works of Pierre Cordier, Denis Brihat and Jean-Pierre Sudre have in common is their use of chemical interventions in the printing process to produce unique photographic objects. Sudre, Brihat and Cordier are important to the history of photography because their work questions the mainstream practices of 20th century analog photography. They do this by transforming conventional photographic materials into non-conventional images, and by being active agents in the creation of these images. Sudre’s, Brihat’s and Cordier’s works bring questions about photographic materiality back into the critical discussion of what defines photography. I intend to investigate how the nature of photographic materiality has been addressed during significant periods and movements in the history of photography before Sudre, Brihat and Cordier did their work, in order to understand how and why their approach is innovative and important.