id: 313952
accession number: 2018.297
share license status: Copyrighted
url: https://clevelandart.org/art/2018.297
updated: 2023-03-22 03:05:17.935000
My Ghost: For Allegra, 2014. Adam Fuss (British, b. 1961). Daguerreotype; plate: 59.7 x 96.5 cm (23 1/2 x 38 in.); framed: 73 x 109.9 x 4.4 cm (28 3/4 x 43 1/4 x 1 3/4 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Alma Kroeger Fund 2018.297 © Adam Fuss
title: For Allegra
title in original language:
series: My Ghost
series in original language:
creation date: 2014
creation date earliest: 2014
creation date latest: 2014
current location:
creditline: Alma Kroeger Fund
copyright: © Adam Fuss
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culture: England, 21st century
technique: daguerreotype
department: Photography
collection: PH - Misc. 21st Century
type: Photograph
find spot:
catalogue raisonne:
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CREATORS
* Adam Fuss (British, b. 1961) - artist
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measurements: Plate: 59.7 x 96.5 cm (23 1/2 x 38 in.); Framed: 73 x 109.9 x 4.4 cm (28 3/4 x 43 1/4 x 1 3/4 in.)
state of the work:
edition of the work:
support materials:
inscriptions:
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CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
title: Stories From Storage
opening date: 2021-02-07T05:00:00
Stories From Storage. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 7-May 16, 2021).
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LEGACY EXHIBITIONS
* Adam Fuss, Circumambulation. Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, CO (December 26, 2014-February 6, 2015).
* Retro-spective: Analog Photography in a Digital World. Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL (September 24, 2016-January 8, 2017).
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PROVENANCE
Adam Fuss (the artist)
date: 2014
footnotes:
citations:
Cheim & Read, New York, NY
date: 2018
footnotes:
citations:
the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
date: December 3, 2018
footnotes:
citations:
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fun fact:
To distract himself from a romantic breakup, Adam Fuss decided to make the world’s largest daguerreotype.
digital description:
This depiction of the Taj Mahal—a monument to a lost love—was produced in 2014 but is based on an 1864 view by British photographer John Murray. Fuss scanned and photoshopped Murray’s paper negative to produce his own homage to a lost love, using one of the oldest photographic processes, the daguerreotype. It is Fuss's monument to his lost love, Allegra.
wall description:
Emperor Shah Jahan commissioned the Taj Mahal in 1632 as a memorial to his wife Mumtaz Mahal. Four centuries later, Adam Fuss challenged himself to create the world’s largest daguerreotype to get over a romantic breakup with Allegra, the woman with whom he first visited the Taj Mahal. He managed to quadruple the size of the largest examples of this 19th-century photographic process.
Fuss based his image on an 1864 negative by John Murray. The limitations of early cameras made it impossible for Murray to express the Taj Mahal’s perfect symmetry, but Fuss was able to scan and “correct” Murray’s negatives in Photoshop. The final file was printed as a positive on clear film; that was put in contact with the daguerreotype plate for 20 hours. The resulting artwork idealizes both the Taj Mahal and Fuss’s lost love.
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RELATED WORKS
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CITATIONS
Fuss, Adam, and W. E. Begley. Adam Fuss: Circumambulation. 2015.
page number:
url:
Tannenbaum, Barbara. “Acquisitions 2018: Photography.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine vol. 59, no. 2 (March/April 2019): 24-25.
page number: Reproduced and Mentioned: P. 24.
url:
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IMAGES