Susie Needham

Susie Needham records the essence and form of flowers by using the same method used by W.H. Fox-Talbot when he first discovered photography: by placing a flower on light sensitive paper and exposing it to light it leaves a mirror image of the specimen or object.

Needham records cultivated flowers and herbs along with elaborate Victorian christening gowns and occasionally cut glass. Her work has sold a number of national museums, hospitals, private collectors and recently to an internationally renowned New York fashion house. She was given the honour of exhibiting her work at The Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire an affirmation that the work is held in high regard having great aesthetic and dynamic presence. The vitality of flowers are captured in that moment in time at the peak of their fruition, especially the wisteria which, like cherry blossom, can be a true wonder and delight for not much more than a week in the season, an example of perfection and simple Zen essence of beautiful life forms.

“An equal number of decades passed before the new efflorescence of the photogram in the hands of Needham, her images reawakening the spirit of Talbot, but with the technical advantages of our own time. Scale is one of them. Where Talbot enregistered tiny, fragile, fragments of lace, Needham has created great images of entire lacy garments, austere white on black, some of which seem to be haunted by the very ghosts of Talbot's own wife and daughters. And even the sun burns with new varieties of colour, inspissating Needham's work with endless varieties of previously unimagined colours. Needham's sure touch brings the photogram to a new and brilliant flowering.”

Noel Chanan, Early Photography Curator, Writer and Collector 2005