Alchemy!

We had a really good flight back from Toronto to Gatwick overnight, then took a train to central London to check into our hotel there for the next couple of nights. After 40 winks to recover slightly we had a couple of hours to spare so we popped into the Wellcome Collection to see what free exhibitions they had on. The most interesting one seemed to be “The Cult of Beauty”, analysing attitudes to beauty over the ages. Some of the exhibits were quite zany; I found the one in my diptych to be the most interesting from the photographic point of view.

It’s by the artist Lauren Bowker (aka #theunseenalchemist on Instagram). It’s called “The Black Morphew”, being a life cast of herself inspired by a formula from the Book of Kirani, one of the first references to alchemy housed in the Collections library: it describes the alchemical process of turning black scars to silver. The exhibit is covered in SPECTRA, a "dual reality" eye shadow developed in 2021 which actually turns black to silver! It’s a cream containing tiny glass beads which reflect light straight back at you rather than bouncing it in all directions.

I took left-hand phone camera photo in room light so it looks almost black; the right-hand one is taken with the flash on: because the flash source is so close to the camera lens the light from the flash, falling on the glass beads, bounces straight back to the camera (it’s similar to the red-eye effect seen with flash photos of people or animals).

Fascinating to me anyway!