‘Language of Colour' marked the first UK exhibition in 17 years of work by Franco Fontana (b.1933), the pioneering Italian colour photographer renowned for his intense and abstracted ‘scapes’: landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes and bodyscapes. The selection showed at Atlas Gallery spanned works from across Fontana’s career, including a collection of more than 170 unique Polaroids.

Fontana’s true subject is colour and how it can express something beyond visual reality, even when the literal subjects of the artist’s photographs are fields, buildings or city pavements. His images are flooded with a shimmering brilliance that shifts meaning to another register, at once abstract and poetic.