Fabian Miller established his reputation from 1976 with an internationally acclaimed series of photographs depicting sea and sky made from his home in Bristol. In 1985, he stopped using a camera and has since then explored the elements of light, time and colour in camera-less images produced in his darkroom. His pictures draw from the early darkroom experiments of pioneers such as William Henry Fox Talbot and Anna Atkins, but also connect with a Modernist tradition of formal abstraction. His work has often been placed among the context of other international artists such as Donald Judd, Elsworth Kelly and James Turrell, but also within an English tradition tracing back to J.M.W. Turner, and post-war abstract painters such as Patrick Heron and Ben Nicholson.

In Fabian Miller’s camera-less pictures the subjects cast their own image. He creates them by putting objects directly onto a photographic enlarger, then shining light through them. Through his technique he bypasses camera and lens, thus enabling a more direct interaction between light, his depicted subjects, and the process of capturing them on photographic paper. In this 'positive to positive' process he faithfully portrays the colour and shape of the projected object. 'Reed with Eight Cuts' is an example of Fabian Miller’s practice of gathering and exploring the development of plant material over time. The colour and form of each reed collected in summer, autumn and winter owe to the changing seasons and the breakdown of chlorophyll in the leaves that is caused by changes in the length of daylight and in temperature.