Cornelia Parker is a London-based artist who works in sculpture, installation and photography. In this piece, Bated Breath: Fluff and Dust Collected from the Whispering Gallery, St. Paul's Cathedral, London, the artist has tried to capture the atmosphere within the Cathedral. As she herself describes, 'I focused on the felted layer of dust that had collected on the edges of the parapet. This dust formed an accumulated acoustic, built up over time by the thousands of whispering visitors. Later, trapped between the glass, the fluff and dust was used as a negative to produce a photogram'.

A photogram is a photograph made without a camera or a lens by placing an object or objects on top of a piece of paper or film coated with light-sensitive materials and then exposing the paper or film to light. Where the object covers the paper, the paper remains unexposed and light in tone; where it does not cover, the paper darkens. If the object is translucent, midtones appear. After exposure the paper is developed and fixed.