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Garry Fabian Miller

Born 1957, Bristol.

Garry Fabian Miller was taught how to use a camera by his father who was a professional photographer. His early minimal photographs of seascapes and sky attracted acclaim, for example in 1976 at the Serpentine Galley in London when he was nineteen years old but after 1983, however, he stopped using a camera and directed light through a variety of filters such as plant material or water and oil onto Cibachrome paper becoming a pioneer and hugely influential exponent of camera-less photography. Eventually he worked exclusively in the darkroom using coloured glass, cut-out paper shapes and differing exposure times, sometimes lasting many hours, manipulating light and colour to achieve his unique and evocative abstract images.

He had his first solo exhibition at the Arnolfini, Bristol in 1979, and later at the De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill in 1997 and a major show at the Mead Gallery at the University of Warwick in 2005.

The uniqueness and international impact of his work can be seen in the list of public and private collections acquiring examples, including the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris; the Metropolitan Museum in New York; Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art; The Fogg Art Museum, Boston; the Government Art Collection, UK; Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield; Houston Museum of Fine Art, Texas; Kasama Nichido Museum of Art, Tokyo; the Museet for Fotokunst, Odense; Museum of Contemporary Art, Bangkok; Museum Ritter Waldenbuch, Germany; Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach; Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney; and the Sir Elton John Collection.

Cut Flower Blue, Lincolnshire, Spring 1985
Swim, Autumn 1986
Sun Rose, Parke Estate, Devon. Summer 1989
Son, March 12th 1993
Son, March 7th 1993
Son, March 18th 1993