“Produced with a camera obscura, Lutter’s images are different than those created by typical photographic means, especially because they are not made with the aid of conventional reproduction technology. A negative does not exist to make prints (so each image is unique), and no mechanical means guides the exposure. Lutter’s works employ minimally invasive techniques. She modulates the intensity of light by manipulating it directly on the surface, in a temporal and morphological way. These minimal techniques provoke questions of whether these works should even be considered photography or whether they represent a recourse to prephotographic methods of image making that engage shadows, reflections, and other light effects (effects that Lutter has incorporated into her compositions for scenographic works). […]

Two modes are at work that distance Lutter’s mechanically produced images from conventional representation to the greatest possible extent while not entirely dismissing it. In stark contrast to a digital manipulation process that expands image content, Lutter’s process expands the temporal moment of image capture. Her retouching of the photographic paper is carried out by hand during the exposure. As a result, one could say that these are works on paper. The process Lutter employs is far more fragile and ephemeral, and thus points precisely to what seems to slip away from traditional documentary photography: the chaotic side of a world in motion that mirrors the ruin one might encounter in fiction.”

– Excerpt from the essay “To Set the Negative as a Metaphor for Light: On Vera Lutter’s Aesthetic Process” by Gertrud Koch from Vera Lutter, 2012.