London Alternative Photography Collective (LAPC)
LAPC is an open collective, formed in 2013 by Melanie King at the E5 Darkroom in Hackney. Later, Melanie was joined by Almudena Romero and Diego Valente as co-directors. The group was formed to enable a dialogue about analogue and experimental photographic processes and how they are used in contemporary art. LAPC organises talks, workshops, demonstrations and exhibitions to promote the accessibility and experimental uses of analogue photography processes.
http://londonaltphoto.tumblr.com 

The London Alternative Photography Collective provides regular artist talks on the subject of analogue and alternative photography processes used in contemporary art. The collective supports practitioners who challenge traditional ways of printing images to reflect on contemporary issues. The London Alternative Photography collective is also a platform for exchange of knowledge and skills, as well as creative ideas and exhibition concepts. We regularly curate exhibitions and run affordable/free workshops and demonstrations and organise symposiums in London.

Exhibition blurb: „One of the basic lessons in photography is not to point your camera at the sun. This show brings together artists who have done just this, using handmade cameras to photograph the sun, moon and stars. With exposure times of several months – and cosmological subjects several million miles away – these images compress both time and space into single, fragile images. Including such alternative processes as pinhole solargraphy, lunar photography, motor controlled time-lapse and chemograms, this exhibition reveals a fascination with the pristine world of outer space through the idiosyncratic lens of earthly existence.”

Artist biographies

Anthony Carr
Born in London (UK), Anthony Carr is an artist based in Victoria (Canada), whose practice is predominantly in photography and sculpture. Over the years Carr has developed an interest in lo-fi techniques and in particular pinhole photography. He was awarded the Hotshoe Photofusion Award in 2015 and was more recently the recipient of a grant from the Eaton Fund (2017). Noteworthy recent exhibitions include Inside Out at Five Points Gallery, Connecticut, USA (2019), The Stars Look So Different Tonight at Fotogalerie Wien, Austria (2019), Made In Brixton - After Dark at Photofusion, London, UK (2018) and APT SHOTS: Passionate Process at A.P.T Gallery, London, UK (2017).
www.anthonycarr.co.uk 

Melanie King
Melanie King is an artist and curator with a specific focus on astronomy. She is co-director of super/collider, Lumen Studios and the London Alternative Photography Collective. She is a lecturer on the MA programme at the Royal College of Art, and on the BA Photography course at the University of West London. Melanie is a part time doctoral student at the Royal College of Art.
She is interested in the relationship between starlight, photography and materiality.  Her PhD research project „Ancient Light: Rematerializing the Astronomical Image” considers how light travels thousands, if not millions of years, before reaching photosensitive film or a digital sensor.  Her main body of photographs „Ancient Light” comprises of a series of analogue photographic negatives and prints of star-scapes, as well as a series of images created using telescopes and observatories around the world. The purpose of her research is to demonstrate the intimate connection between celestial objects (sun, moon, stars), photographic material and the natural world.
www.melaniek.co.uk 

Ky Lewis
Ky lives in London, working across disciplines, employing both traditional and alternative techniques, with an interest in process, slow photography, pinhole and camera-less methods. Predominantly using light and chemicals, she experiments to create images with environmental, ecological and time-based elements. She has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally. „Searching for Light” is a double durational study, documenting the passage of the sun whilst looking at the effect of temperature, humidity and light on seeds contained within the camera. These lay in situ for approximately 60 days. Results and failures were both recorded.
www.kylewis.co.uk 

Nick Sayers
Nick Sayers is a Brighton-based artist and maker. He makes art inspired by science, using everyday materials to make abstract scientific topics accessible, real and fun. For his Solargraphs project, he has shot Brighton landmarks using super-long-exposure pinhole cameras made from aluminium cans and photographic paper.
behance.net/nicksayers 

Olga Suchanova
Slovakian-born visual artist Olga Suchanova lives and works in London. Olga’s background is in art, science and technology. She plays with the concept of space, time, illusion and reality, using photography, printmaking, screen printing, painting and mixed digital realities. Olga’s aim is to experiment with these media, and explore how to combine old technologies with new advances in digital technology.
www.artsciencecsm.com/students/olga-suchanova 

Pauline Woolley
Born Cheshire (UK), Pauline Woolley is an artist based in the East Midlands (UK) whose practice deals with using celestial objects and skyscapes to create abstract images using pinhole cameras and alternative techniques. Recent exhibitions include „Writing Skyscapes” Backlit Gallery and Creswell Crags Museum, Nottinghamshire and Brighton Photo Fringe with LAPC. In 2018 Woolley spent three days at Tate Exchange, Tate Modern, London with Nottingham based Outsider Artist Collective as part of an ongoing project called ‘Under One Sky’.
www.paulinewoolley.co.uk 

Maciej Zapiór with Łukasz Fajfrowski)
Maciej Zapiór is an astronomer, photographer, and solargrapher. Research experience: PhD, Wrocław University (Poland) 2013. Postdoctoral fellowship: University of the Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, 2013-15. Since 2016 he has worked at the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Science, Ondřejov, Czech Republic. Fields of interest: solar spectroscopy and solar prominence seismology (science), slow and repetitive processes (photography). He has been involved in solargraphy since 2005. Inventor of the solargraphy analemma project and sequence of expositions designer. Mechanic system camera designer.
Łukasz Fajfrowski is a physicist, programmer (mainly LabView), amateur astronomer, and juggler. He works at Wroclaw Medical University. He has been involved in solargraphy since 2013 – he invented a way to automate the process, and has worked as an electronic designer, authored the shutter control algorithm and implemented the project.
http://analemma.pl