Why Alexander James is in the Design 100

Alexander James built his reputation on a technique few photographers would attempt twice: submerging elaborate sculptural compositions in tanks of purified water and shooting them on analogue cameras, the results printed as captured, with no post-production intervention. He founded Distil Ennui Studio in 1990, and the practice — spanning photography, sculpture and installation — has since relocated across several continents, always returning to the same elemental subject: how water holds and bends light.

Three decades in, that singularity of process took him to Soneva Fushi’s Makers’ Place in the Maldives, where his illuminated photograms helped fund a carbon-neutral studio built from recycled island waste. It is a rare pairing of formal rigour and environmental purpose, sustained without deviation since 1990 — and exactly the kind of long, singular practice the Design 100 exists to recognise.