Théodore Brauner (1914-2000) Cosmogony I, 1952. Vintage silver print (solarfixe), signed in white lower right. Title, date, annotations and photographer's signature in pencil on verso. 23.5 x 16.8 cm - frame Provenance : - Galerie 1900-2000, Paris. - Galerie Thessa Herold, Paris. Exhibition: - Cosmos, en busca de los origenes, de Kupka a Kubrick, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 2008. - Un monde non-objectif en photographie, Paris, Galerie Thessa Herold, 2003. Bibliography: Georges Sebbag, Memorabilia. Dada et Surréalisme 1916-1970, Paris, Cercle d'Art, 2010, p. 338. Solarfixe, so named by Théodore Brauner, is a process of direct exposure of the photosensitive surface to light, and is part of the long tradition of techniques that do not use a darkroom. Yet Brauner's penchant for the evocative and poetic of the indiscernible partly distances him from it. The fact that Brauner does not modulate the action of light immediately on the surface of the sheet with the aid of objects, but rather lets other, less determined parameters nuance it (all the atmospheric conditions of the moment and an uncontrolled vis-à-vis), brings this technique closer to August Strinberg's illusory astronomical observation procedures (he simply placed the bare plate facing the sky) than to Man Ray's rayograms.