My final selection of works explores preservation and decay, the beauty of nature in unnatural spaces, and the personal relationships people build with plants. I had no final product in mind while working on this brief, which I think really helped my making process. While I’m usually the type to plan things meticulously and give up early because I’m afraid of failing, I found myself so excited by and passionate about this brief that I didn’t put myself under that same pressure. Reflecting on my final works, I can see how this allowed my ideas to develop several times in ways I hadn’t planned or expected. Rather than sticking with a single concept, I expanded my thought processes and experimented with my approach, leaving me with several resolved works rather than a build-up to a single ‘final work’.
I’d never been in a darkroom before starting this brief, but it didn’t take long for me to fall in love with the analogue processes we got to learn about. I felt so connected to the work I was making because of how involved I got to be in every step of the process. I’ve always been passionate about photography so I went into the brief pretty excited to learn alternative processes, but I loved it even more than I thought I would. The way these methods are so hands-on really made me appreciate every photo I took and allowed for constant reflection. I felt a much more personal attachment to the work I was making than I often feel with my digital photography, which I think has resulted in a much bigger sense of accomplishment and pride now that the brief is finished. Even now when I look at my final display I can think of ideas for new works and ways I could further develop my ideas, but to me, that just speaks to how passionate I really am about what I’ve made.
The only thing I worried about at the beginning of this brief was how centred around nature it is. I’ve stayed away from nature and landscape photography in the past because I’ve always felt as though any landscape photo I took would end up being a replica of countless other people’s photos of that exact same landscape. I guess digitally capturing nature just always felt too far removed for me and I lacked a connection to the photos I could produce. However, I found exploring nature with analogue processes to be an entirely different experience. I felt a connection not only personally to the work but between the methods and the subject matter. It really felt like nature was drawing itself, rather than just being described by me.