Is it possible to photograph the future?

As cameras become omnipresent in our lives today – expanding into a vast range of processes and products – it is important to remind ourselves of its intimate and historical connection to a literal sense of the ‘clear sighted’, as well as the more mysterious, psychic, and visionary ideas conjured from the term, ‘clairvoyance’.

Clairvoyance is a photographic exhibition curated by Diploma students undertaking a study of photography at NCAT, Preston. The current meaning of the term ‘clairvoyance’ – an extrasensory perception of the future – harks back to mid 19th century France, around the very same time the likes of Niépce and Daguerre were experimenting with the mysterious process of ‘painting with light’ - a technique that we today call photography.

The eleven exhibiting artists explore the intersections of clairvoyance and photography, employing a myriad of techniques and technologies to allow us to imagine just what it would look like to photograph the future.