‘Light, color and shadow'

“Crush & Pull with Hands & Penlights” (Polaroid color prints), by Hartford-based photographer Ellen Carey, in her show “Struck by Light,’’ at the New Britain (Conn.) Museum of American Art, July 20 to Jan. 28

The museum says:

“Since the early 1990s, artist Ellen Carey (b. 1952) has created experimental and abstract works that defy photographic conventions. Struck by Light represents the largest survey of Carey’s innovative photo-objects and lens-based artworks. Spanning 30 years of her prolific career, the exhibition includes examples of her Photography Degree Zero (1996–2023) practice of Polaroid 20 X 24 lens-based images—including Pulls and Rollbacks—as well as her Struck by Light (1992–2023) series of camera-less photograms—Dings and Shadows—inspired by the earliest examples of paper photography. Collectively, the works trace Carey’s enormous contributions to the field of photography through her pioneering explorations of light, color and shadow, and are drawn from the collections of the New Britain Museum of American Art and the artist.’’

Polaroid Land Camera Model 95, the first commercially available instant camera. It went on the market in 1948. The “Land’’ for Edwin Land, inventor of the camera and the founder of Polaroid Corp., in Cambridge, Mass.