Mat Collishaw’s Thresholds
A Multisensory Journey from Early Photography to Virtual Reality
Abstract
In 2017, Mat Collishaw presented Thresholds, a cross-reality installation first exhibited at Somerset House, London. Wearing the VR headset, visitors are transported to William Henry Fox Talbot’s 1839 exhibition in Birmingham, encountering his experimental ‘photogenic drawings’. The artwork involves multiple thresholds: entering the installation, donning the VR headset, crossing spatiotemporal boundaries, and inhabiting the image itself as an unframed, immersive environment. This paper situates Collishaw’s artistic research within a broader historical and theoretical framework, arguing that Thresholds, precisely in taking the form of a virtual re-enactment of Talbot’s exhibition, serves as a critical reflection on the evolving relationship between image-making and technology – from the birth of photography to the advent of virtual reality.
Presentato: 31 Agosto 2025 | Accettato: 24 Novembre 2025 | Pubblicato Prossimamente | Lingua: en
Keywords Image-making • An-icon • William Henry Fox Talbot • Reenactment • Immersive art
Copyright © 2025 Elisabetta Modena. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/VA/2385-2720/2025/01/009