THE SERIES IS DEDICATED TO THE SUBJECT AND OBJECT OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND ITS COMPLICATED EXISTENCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY FORESHADOWING OUR FRAGILE HUMAN EXISTENCE.

In my practice, I retrace the beginnings of photography to find new sustainable solutions for photography. I deconstruct recipes from the 1800s and earlier, to address our insatiable need to ‘take’ more photographs. It seeks to address a new definition of photography; one without silver or plastic at its core. By turning away from the photo-industrial ingredients of photography, I ‘make’ contemporary light-sensitive images that reference photography’s history which convey an urgent environmental, contextual message.

I work on a surface by selecting raw cellulose-based papers, I coat these substrates with homemade emulsions that reference ancient ink-making processes. I harvest plants that possess ‘exciting’ properties that are inspired by Fox Talbot’s calotype process. My slow practice observes actinic light and how it performs with plant-based emulsions and developers. I play with long exposures and ways of slowing photographic processes down to original invention speeds. These photographic objects are the story — they index photography and its 21st-century state which is slippery and without boundary.

Daily, I can be found, collecting plants, grinding pigments, straining liquid, and researching old recipes to create new ways of working. It is slow and possibly the antithesis of what photography has become.

I challenge a new beginning among artists to retrace the steps of the innovators of the 1800s, a time when the study of natural chemistry was in its infancy. The light spectrum and its capabilities were little known, plant knowledge was limited, and raw chemicals were only just becoming available for chemists to experiment with.

I have developed a plant-based, light-sensitive emulsion that seeks to leave ‘mining-centred’ silver and ‘chemical-centred’ plastic behind. I have purposely developed the practice as an act of eco-activism to highlight photography’s environmental impact. I am referencing Low Impact Photography (L.I.P) the movement that seeks to highlight photography’s environmentally expensive nature.

The work, which draws from the ‘iron-based’ alternative photographic principles, is heavily influenced by historical practices that have been marginalised. The abstract photographic works are exposed using ultraviolet light over several days, the antithesis of today’s fast and furious consumption of photography.

Sustainability and working with nature are important parts of my practice. For me, the work is activism, subtle activism within our photographic landscape.