Author: Stasia

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.

After making my cyanotypes I put them on my wall with everything I already had displayed and started to experiment with how I could display everything.

I didn’t like how everything became one big grid in this layout, especially since everything was displayed horizontally. It made the display boring to look at and made each work feel less individual.

I decided to print out my tree pinhole photos as A2’s so they didn’t get lost in the display. This made them a lot more prominent on the wall without being too big, I’m very happy with their size now. I also decided that less is more with the pressed flowers/book photograms because displaying only 4 of the 6 meant I could space them out which makes them more recognisable as books. I also tried out only displaying one cyanotype with one flower pinhole photo because having two of each felt redundant.

Having the book photograms directly underneath the flower bunches felt a little too crowded so I moved them back to the side in a vertical layout. I did like the way having them lower resembled the height at which we may hold a book, but I really want the flower bunches to be perceived as a separate work and have their own section of the wall. I also made the A2 tree pinhole photos sit directly on top of each other in order to display them all as one work.

The last adjustment I made was swapping the flower pinhole photo for the other cyanotype and displaying them horizontally rather than vertically. I decided the cyanotypes show what I was trying to do with the flower pinhole photos but better, and the colour ties in with the ideas of beauty and decor that I was exploring. Displaying them horizontally makes a lot more sense as well because it’s as if they’ve been positioned next to each other on the window sill like in the photos. Before the assessment tomorrow I plan to space everything out a bit more to make full use of my wall space.

Above is the work I displayed during the crit sessions yesterday. I got some really helpful feedback:

-flower bunch photograms could be better enlarged in order to make details more visible, could also be printed as positives
-photograms with text in the background are good at the size they are in order to mimic a book, maybe could display in a grid format
-pinhole photos of the jar of flowers are interesting because of the relationship between the object and the outdoor location

This is how my wall looks now after taking in the feedback and making some changes. I’m very glad I enlarged the flower bunch photograms, initially I kind of associated them with the book-inspired photograms and felt attached to the 1-1 scale. However, I think there’s a nice link between the flower bunches and the lone tree composition I was exploring with the pinhole camera, so enlarging them feels like a more effective comparison between the two. I also printed positives for all the book photograms and displayed them in a grid that mimics open books. I think this display links nicely to the subject matter, not only in that the double pages look like open books but in that the mirrored effect reflects the act of flower pressing, showing how the plants lay flat between two pages. Looking at it again now is making me wonder if I should make the grid horizontal rather than vertical, perhaps like books on a shelf and at a height on the wall where we would usually hold a book, I’ll try that when I next rearrange the wall.
Seeing my work like this has also made me think about ideas of decay and preservation. Flower bunches and bouquets are beautiful quite temporarily before the picked flowers die, and pressed flowers are a way of preserving that beauty in a different way. It was suggested to me that I make the flower bunch photograms into positives like so:

However, I’ve decided to stick with my initial prints/negatives, because I like the way they suggest absence and look almost like holes where the flower bunches once were. These positives give a lot more permanence to the flower bunches and make them look like more solid objects which I don’t feel like reflects the temporary nature of their purpose.
As for the pinhole photos, I don’t like the way I currently have them displayed around the edges of the flower bunches. Honestly, I wasn’t sure where to put them so that’s just where they ended up for now. Reflecting on it now, I think it could be good if I put them higher up on the wall, reflecting the scale of trees and how we look up at them in nature. I’m undecided on whether I’ll be including the negatives of the pinhole photos, I think I might just be too attached to them and want them there when they aren’t really necessary but I also like them just as much as the A3 positives because I feel like they most authentically show nature drawing itself.

I also spent today making these cyanotypes of flower bunches on my window sill. The original photo was taken with my digital camera because I wanted clarity and contrast I just wasn’t getting with the pinhole camera. I wanted to use the cyanotype method in conjunction with the imagery of flowers I’ve been exploring because of the colour it provides. One of the things I’ve been considering while working on this brief is the ways we use nature as decoration, and a large portion of flowers’ appeal in that sense is their beautiful colours, which I just couldn’t get across with photogram and pinhole methods. Unlike the photograms of flowers, which I feel represent more of the absence and perhaps the death of the flowers, these feel a lot more lively which is helped by the clarity of the digital image. There are slight differences between the two cyanotypes too, in the left one the edges where I applied the chemical are visible and the right one is fully coated, meaning the edges of the original image are visible. The right one also has a white corner that I must have missed while applying the chemical which bothers me, and I prefer the way the left one looks where the sponge strokes are visible because it eliminates the harsh borders visible in the right one. I initially intended to display them both together but I favour the left one so much that I might just display it on its own.

Cyanotypes are made by coating material such as paper, fabric or wood in a light-sensitive solution and then exposing the dried material to ultraviolet light. To produce an image one can use objects to leave a print behind like you would in a photogram, or use the negative of a photo to create a positive.

Heidi Kirkpatrick, a fine art photographer based in Oregon, makes cyanotypes in her backyard during summer with vintage clothing, personal possessions, and plants from her garden. Kirkpatrick’s work explores the female figure, family narratives and history by combining photography with physical objects such as plates, tins, books and mahjong tiles that encourage viewers to observe and interact with the work in a unique way. These works in particular make me think about the ways in which we interact with nature. Through Kirkpatricks use of the cyanotype method, she creates a relationship between the plants she uses and the physical body that the clothing represents. I like the way the one on the left isn’t fully coated and includes some splatter of the chemical further up the dress, I feel like it hints towards the motion required to apply the chemical and in turn makes me consider the way we move within nature.

Barbara Hazen is a photographer from California who frequently uses cyanotypes in her work which explores memory and the internal self. These works by Hazen really highlighted to me the different ways cyanotypes can be used. In Heidi Kirkpatricks work the method is used more like a photogram, whereas I almost didn’t believe these works were cyanotypes because of how real they look. Hazen often explores the concept of memory in her work, and I think cyanotypes complement this nicely. Cyanotypes are used not only for photographic means but to reproduce blueprints, and even within the arts can serve the purpose of creating iterations of already existing imagery. Creating cyanotypes of an image is almost like a memory of the original photo, which is an interesting link between the ideas Hazen explores and the media she chooses.

Bibliography:
https://www.heidikirkpatrick.com/pages/garments-of-light-main.html
https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/edu/alh/fern-2015-heidi-kirkpatrick
https://www.heidikirkpatrick.com/pages/bioresume.html
https://barbarahazen.com/bio/
https://www.cordenpottsgallery.com/barbara-hazen

This week we were introduced to cyanotypes, I also continued working in the darkroom with photograms and the pinhole camera.

This is the cyanotype I made during the workshop, I still had the leaves with me that I made photograms with last week so I used them again on this fabric. I like the versatility of cyanotypes in comparison to photograms. The freedom to use various materials and apply the chemical in different patterns or shapes are the things I found most interesting during the workshops. This ended up being the only cyanotype I made because I had some other ideas I wanted to work on in the darkroom but I plan to explore the possibilities of cyanotypes a lot more next week.

As for pinhole photos, I decided to go down to Queen Street and attempt to photograph a busy intersection because I was curious about how all the movement of cars/people would show up in the final photo.

It was a very sunny day and while I can’t remember the exact exposure time, it was less than 30 seconds which still resulted in a slightly overexposed image. This photo was taken while pedestrians were crossing, but you wouldn’t know that by looking at it. Some parts of the image seem a little blurred or distorted which is really the only evidence of movement in the photo at all. I also made sure to pick an intersection where I could see trees lining the pavement in order to make sure I was aligning my work with the brief. Most of my photos so far have had trees be the centre point with the city surrounding them whereas this photo focuses more on the spaces where trees are inserted, highlighting how they have become part of the urban environment.

I also took these photos of a glass jar with a bunch of flowers inside it, because I really liked the photograms I made with flower bunches and wanted to see if I could make something similar with the pinhole camera. The first one didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped because not long into the exposure it got quite windy so the flowers moved around, leaving the final image quite blurry. I moved to a more sheltered spot the second time around and I think the results were much better. Unlike what I’ve been photographing so far, in these images I was the one to insert nature into a new context. Considering the ways in which cities have patches of nature inserted along sidewalks and in parks has led me to think about the ways we as individuals do that to our personal spaces as well. It really goes to show the close relationship we have to nature, and how we not only physically need it but mentally benefit from it presence. One of the ways I’ve thought about this is with bouquets and flower displays, because they really capture the way we use nature as decoration, which doesn’t seem dissimilar to me from the way cities are decorated with plants. With these photos I wanted to bridge these concepts by inserting a small bunch of flowers into an outdoor urban space that also has it’s own patches of nature.

The photograms I made of bunches of flowers tied together with string reminded me of pressed flowers. I remember pressing flowers in books when I was a kid, so I wanted to make some photograms that would look like the page of a book with flowers pressed against it. I started by printing a few pages from a book I found at the library called The Cabaret of Plants which was about our relationship with nature not only physically but spiriturally and emotionally, with chapters about history and science in relation to nature. I printed the pages onto clear plastic and lay it on top of the photo paper in the darkroom so that the words would show up in the final image, and put flowers on top to give the effect of them being pressed in a book.

For two of the photograms I made it so that the text would show up backwards, I then inverted them in lightroom so that they’d look like actual book pages with sillhouettes of pressed plants on top. I really like how they all turned out, the way some of the petals are slightly transparent makes it look like the text is simultaneously beneath and above the flowers, which links nicely to the way flowers being pressed in a book would have text both beneath and above them. Perhaps to replicate that more I could put another sheet of text on top of the flowers, so two layers of pages would be reflected in the final image. I like the way the inverted ones also include ideas of negatives and positives that are part of the pinhole photos process.

I was sick for most of this week so I couldn’t work in the darkroom much, but I stopped by today (Friday) to make some photograms with some leaves that I found on my way home yesterday.

I was mainly interested in how the small holes left by bugs would show up in the photograms. While I can’t include the bug responsible for these interesting patterns or even capture the action that led to them, using these leaves reminded me of the works I researched by Michael Flomen which are essentially collaborations with bugs and insects. He allows for the visual outcomes of his photos to be completely determined by nature, highlighting how the movements of fireflies or spiders can create drawings of their own. It’s this that made me consider the small holes in these leaves as drawings of their own, expanding my view of the ways in which nature can draw itself. I also like the concept of decay that I feel is present in these photograms, which is something I might explore further.

I also spent some of this week reading about the connection between trees and people, as I’ve found myself basing a lot of my work in the darkroom around trees inserted into urban areas. It’s fascinating how many similarities can be found between humans and trees, the most significant one to me is how trees of the same species are communal organisms and will often form alliances with trees of other species. This means that trees thrive with other trees, which is an interesting thing to consider as I photograph isolated trees in the city. There are of course good reasons for trees to be included in cities, such as their ability to clean the air, provide oxygen and the way they promote biodiversity. However, I find the way this is executed in many cases to not be so respectful towards the trees that we have an interdependent relationship with. It’ll be interesting to see how this research is able to inform my making process for the remainder of the assignment.

Bibliography:
https://www.activesustainability.com/construction-and-urban-development/benefits-of-trees-in-cities/?_adin=02021864894
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-whispering-trees-180968084/
https://www.thelivingurn.com/blogs/news/the-special-relationship-between-people-and-trees
https://uplift.love/the-astounding-connection-between-people-and-trees/

A photogram is an image made without a camera by placing items onto photographic paper and exposing it to light, leaving behind silhouettes. Depending on how much light is received by different parts of the paper, tones in the final image may vary with some areas being grey and others black or white.

An artist who works a lot with photograms is Michael Flomen. The outdoors at night is Flomen’s darkroom, as his practice is based on allowing nature to draw itself. Flomen works by placing the photographic paper in direct contact with nature such as firefly light, snowflakes, moonlight, ponds, streams or shadows.

BEING was made by Flomen with the help of a firefly walking over his film. Flomen’s practice has given me a greater understanding of how nature can draw itself because he leaves his photos entirely at the mercy of the elements. The environments he works in have just as much control over the images as he does as if he is truly collaborating with nature rather than just capturing it from his own perspective. BEING is a perfect example of this, as the composition, pattern, and light were entirely controlled by the firefly. From the Web was made with spiders, their webs, and rainwater on colour film and once again is a beautiful collaboration with nature. I particularly enjoy Flomens inclusion of insects and bugs in his works, I think it’s fascinating to see how their movements can create drawings of their own.

Another artist who worked with photograms is Hungarian photographer, painter and designer, Gyorgy Kepes. Evident in his photograms is Kepes’s background in design, as he explores both geometric forms and organic shapes derived from nature. Many of his works are almost scientific as he went on to develop an interest in scientific records through light recordings of natural objects. I love how photograms can be used more factually to accurately represent shapes and lines found in objects and nature, as well as in more abstract ways. In these works, I like how the varying tones give a sense of depth to the otherwise 2D imagery. In Bas Relief with Circles, I really enjoy the juxtaposition between the circles that appear boldly in the foreground and what appears to be a leaf in the background, because it’s interesting to explore the relationship between more geometric shapes and the organic forms found in nature.

Bibliography
https://www.artsy.net/artist/michael-flomen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Flomen
https://www.instagram.com/michaelflomen/?hl=en
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kepes-lily-and-egg-p80542
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/kepes-bas-relief-with-circles-p80547

This week on Tuesday we focused on continuing to practice using our pinhole cameras.

Perhaps due to coming back to the pinhole camera after being unable to use it over the weekend, I didn’t really like the results I got from Tuesday. All of these are overexposed and due to the weather changing a fair bit while taking the photos I felt frustrated trying to get it right. I have a feeling it was just because I was getting the hang of it again after not using the pinhole camera all weekend. Despite being overexposed, I do like the larger image I took of the tree. While exploring this brief I’ve been particularly interested in patches of nature that have been inserted into unnatural places, such as this tree that was planted in a hole in the sidewalk. I like how there’s a lamp post to its right captured in the image too, as we could view it as a comparison between the two. Trees in places like this line the sidewalks and roads in holes that are equal distances apart. They grow and are maintained in a very orderly and controlled way that isn’t all that reflective of what nature’s really like so, in this way, they are almost more like lamp posts.

On Wednesday we learnt how to make photograms in the darkroom. I really enjoyed this process, it was far more simple than I expected and yet has so many possibilities.

These are the first few attempts that I made during the class. The last image was my first experiment using a double exposure. Compositionally, my favourite is the third test strip because I like the way the flowers create an S shape. Something amazing about nature is all the organic shapes that can be found within it, and I think it reflects that. I didn’t have that many leaves or flowers to play around with during the class so I decided to get some more afterwards and went back in the afternoon.

I started off by continuing to experiment. I like the simplicity of photograms, of capturing the silhouette of a single leaf in order to examine its details. Similarly, I liked placing three flowers from the same plant next to each other to highlight both their similarities and slight differences. The bottom left photogram I took in reference to the photos I’ve taken with my pinhole camera that feature lone trees in the centre, and put other plants at the bottom of the image to hint at the scale of the ‘tree’. The small scratches visible in the grey background is due to the glass I used to press down the plants in order to enhance the silhouette left by the light.

I decided it would be interesting to switch up the size of the paper I was using and cut some test strips in half to focus on the details of smaller plants. For the flowers, I used the glass to press them down in order to flatten out the petals a bit, allowing for clearer shapes to appear on the paper from the silhouettes.

These are by far my favourite photograms I made this week. I had the idea as I was collecting some more flowers to use in the dark room with my friend and we kept referring to my mismatched handful of plants as a bouquet. I took some string with me to the darkroom afterwards and used it to tie some of the flowers together in little bunches, and used the glass to make them lie flat on the paper. Aside from finding these photograms really pretty, they made me think about ways in which we consume and buy nature. It’s interesting how people enjoy decorating their homes with flowers and plants, kind of like how cities are decorated with trees and parks.

I went back to the darkroom on Thursday initially to do some more photograms but I was feeling uninspired by the compositions I was coming up with so I also took some photos with my pinhole camera.

After not experimenting much with layering on Wednesday I kinda started off by putting a bunch of stuff on the paper all at once. I didn’t like it because I hadn’t chosen plants that were even remotely relevant to each other so it looked pointless and messy. The second image I feel similarly about, it’s not as messy but I just don’t like it. For the third image, I went back to more simple compositions. I put two flowers from the same plant face down on the paper so they flattened out. You can see how the middle of the flower wasn’t entirely flat by the shading on the edges of the petals towards the centre. I like how this made a shape very different to the normal shape of the flower. For the fourth image, I gave triple exposure a try. I like the sense of depth created by the varying tones, but I think I need to experiment more with multiple exposures.

I found Thursday far more successful than Tuesday with my pinhole camera. The weather was very consistent which helped. I tried my first double-exposure photo, as I thought the tree I’d previously taken a photo of would be perfect due to the way it stands out so much. My first attempt was a bit overexposed but my second try was much better, I’m very happy with the result. I like how it reminds me of the photograms I’ve done that compare two plants side by side. The last photo is possibly my best image with the pinhole camera so far, at least in terms of exposure. I like the way the tree in the foreground allows for some depth despite the camera leading to everything being in focus. The way the light eats into the branches of the tree to the right is also a very interesting quality of the photos the pinhole camera creates.

Pinhole photography is lensless photography, consisting of a dark box with a tiny hole on one side and film or photographic paper on the other. Pinhole cameras can be made from just about anything that can be kept completely dark on the inside, for example: a paint tin, soda can, cardboard box or even an entire room. Exposure times can vary from seconds to hours, achieved by uncovering and re-covering the small hole in order to allow light through.

One example of a photographer who uses pinhole photography is Nuala Mahon, a fine arts photographer from an island off the southwest coast of Ireland. Mahon uses her photography to capture the large amount of waste that washes up on the beaches where she lives. She uses pinhole cameras made out of cardboard boxes and coffee tins, develops her photos in seaweed she gathers, and fixes the photos in salt solution in order to make her practice as sustainable as possible while raising awareness about pollution.

These are a couple of examples of Mahons work taken with pinhole cameras. I really admire how committed Mahon is to making her practice sustainable, creating a connection between the ethics of her practice and the issues she explores in her work. She also mentions on her website that the appeal of using pinhole cameras for this project lies in how the fragility of the cameras juxtaposes the durability of the plastic waste that she photographs. Pinhole cameras can be deconstructed just as easily as they may be constructed, leaving no trace that they ever even existed other than the images they produced. This enhances the message Mahon aims to deliver through her work about the permanent and long-lasting impact plastic has on the ocean and our environment.

Another photographer who enjoys using pinhole photography is a man who goes by the name Spiffy Tumbleweed, who enjoys the hands-on experience that alternative photographic practices provide him with.

The above photos are a couple that particularly caught my eye while looking through the many pinhole photographs Spiffy has uploaded over the years. ‘Ghost with a shadow’ is a polaroid pinhole photo taken with a home-built camera. The ghostly effect is due to Spiffy moving to open and close the pinhole “shutter”. I love the way this effect can hint towards the waiting required in pinhole photography. Photos are so often used to capture an incredibly brief period of time, sometimes 1/1000 of a second, whereas this method usually documents a longer period of time, showing both the presence and absence of Spiffy in the photo all at once. ‘The Doctors house’ is a pinhole-image on film, shot with a wide angle pinhole camera. This image reminded me of the brief we’re currently working on, in the way that the old house is falling apart while nature is thriving all around it. More often I tend to see nature inserted into urban environments or city structures overtaking green areas, whereas this photo seems to be the opposite with a lone house inserted into nature, and nature reclaiming it.

Sources:
https://jongrepstad.com/pinhole-photography/pinhole-photography-history-images-cameras-formulas/
http://mahons.org/
https://www.flickr.com/people/spiffytumbleweed/