Alison Rossiter: Semblance, on view at Yossi Milo Gallery from January 15 to March 14, 2026, presents a quietly powerful exploration of photography stripped of the camera yet deeply rooted in its history. For her fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, Rossiter draws from her extensive archive of expired photographic papers, transforming materials once designed for utility into meditations on time, process, and perception. The exhibition reflects a practice grounded in restraint, where chance and intention exist in careful balance.
Rossiter’s work begins with acts of selection and discovery. She develops vintage and antique papers—some more than a century old—allowing their latent chemistry to reveal tonal shifts, imperfections, and unexpected textures. These works echo the visual languages of Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism, while remaining unmistakably photographic in their reliance on light-sensitive surfaces. In
Semblance, subtle gradations of black, gray, and white carry the weight of history, offering images that feel both ancient and resolutely contemporary.
A central grouping within the exhibition pairs obsolete daguerreotype plates with early photographic papers, aligning materials from different technological moments into spare, vertical compositions. These works evoke thresholds between invention and obsolescence, progress and decay. Their surfaces—scarred, mottled, and reflective—suggest landscapes, horizons, or fields of color, quietly recalling the ambitions of postwar abstraction while remaining anchored in photographic materiality. Time itself becomes an active collaborator, shaping each surface long after its original purpose has expired.
The exhibition also introduces a body of work inspired by
Man Ray’s early textile constructions, extending Rossiter’s ongoing dialogue with art history. By assembling gaslight photographic papers into patterned forms, she revisits early twentieth-century experiments in abstraction through the lens of contemporary reflection. Silver mirroring and chemical shifts shimmer across the surfaces, functioning both as physical phenomena and as metaphors for memory, distance, and endurance.
In
Semblance, Rossiter invites viewers to slow down and look closely, rewarding patience with subtle complexity. Her works do not illustrate the past; they embody it. Through modest means and rigorous attention, the exhibition affirms photography’s enduring capacity to evolve, even when working with materials long considered finished.
Image:
Alison Rossiter (American, b. 1953)
Eastman Kodak Polycontrast F, expired September 1977, processed 2017, 2025 © Alison Rossiter