Luke Norman and Nik Adam have been collaborating for more than a year. They first came together on a college assignment while studying at the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham, and now partner on their own photography and curatorial projects under the moniker of El Plus En.

Their friendship, and clear sense of having fun working together, is integral to everything they do. And what results is a loose, playful document of their adventures, which attempt to capture raw experiences and the sheer joy of making images, which is only emphasised by their experimental approach, shooting double-exposures, printing flattened tones, and presenting pictures in a “disjointed, casual, pin-up approach”.

The first major project they worked on together is titled Fade in Darkness. “We seem to spend a lot of time taking pictures in the woods, so we thought, ‘Why don’t we explore this environment at night and see what happens?’, says Norman. “Being in a dark space is very disorientating,” adds Adam, “and all your feelings and emotions change. So we used these emotions as the catalyst for the images we produced.”

“We would enter this dark space with our bag of tricks, some flashes and our camera,” says Norman. “We didn’t know what images we would come out with, and that was the most exciting part. We would hear some deep primal noise close to us, but with the darkness of the night, we had no idea what it was or even how close it was, making our imaginations get the better of us. It was this fear and excitement that really drove the project.”

Craig Rochfort, who owns a bookshop specialising in independent publishing in Byron Bay in Australia, saw the project online and suggested making a zine under his Teeluze Press imprint. And that chimed with their own ideas about showing the work, which resulted in them making their own artists book.

Their graduation project, Principles & Theories of Spacetime Manipulation (on show at Freerange), is even more off the wall, exploring the concept of time travel. “We have been reading and researching the science relating to the subject, and it involves a whole load of equations and weird diagrams,” says Norman. “So we decided we wanted to visually interpret certain theories and principles. I think one of the elements of time travel that we find so engaging is that our understanding is relatively basic, and our knowledge of the subject is only visible in mathematics and writings. And through this work we are looking to create something more tangible and accessible where the viewer’s imagination can run wild.”