“Photography emerged from centuries of scientific inquiry into optics, chemistry, and mechanics. Yet typically, the material components essential to this process—light, chemicals, film, paper—dissolve into invisibility, subsumed within the constructed pictures they produce. … Somerville Suite (2023-25) reverses this disappearance by reclaiming photography’s experimental origins. (Justine Varga’s) prints lay bare an unfamiliar, elemental vision of the medium, gesturing not only outward towards representation of external realities but also inward, revealing layered practices shaped by human touch, skilled labour, and intimate dialogue with history. At first glance, the three prints dazzle with brightly coloured geometric forms in cyan, magenta, and yellow. Looking more closely reveals the artist’s mastery of craft and playful exploration of photography’s hidden processes.”

— Excerpt from exhibition text by Erin Pauwels, Associate Professor of Art History at Temple University in Philadelphia. Her most recent book is Napoleon Sarony’s Living Pictures: The Celebrity Photograph in Gilded Age New York (2024).

Justine Varga, Algebra, 2023-24, Chromogenic photograph, edition of 5 + 2AP, 126.7 x 78.2 cm