DEVOTIONS

© Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project © Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project © Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project View all images ↓
View all images ↓
  • Dates
    2024 - Ongoing
  • Author
  • Location Utah, United States
Report issue

DEVOTIONS weaves homemade photochemistry, embodied Sufi practices, and my relationship to the Pando forest. Exploring analog photography as both method and metaphor for revelation, it reflects on material alchemy, ecological reverence, and deep time.

DEVOTIONS is an ongoing body of work that draws from several years of alternative photochemical research, the concepts of Oneness and 'spiritual listening' in Sufism, and my sustained engagement with the Pando aspen forest in Utah. Seemingly 47,000 individual trees, Pando is “a forest of One tree” interconnected by a single immense root system. Believed to be between 16,000 and 80,000 years old, it is the largest known organism on land, spanning 106 acres. 

In this project, Pando becomes both subject and metaphor: a living model of entanglement, multiplicity within unity, visible and invisible relationships, and nonlinear time. DEVOTIONS centers themes of cycles, revolutions, and circumambulations, including the orbit of the moon, moths encircling a light in the darkness, and a continuous image of Pando on a single roll of film. This project approaches the forest not only as a physical site, but as a mythic and cosmological place where ecological, mystical, and material forms of knowledge intersect.

The work is grounded in photochemical experiments. I hand-process film using a homemade coffee-based developer. The resulting images contain chemical irregularities, residues, and inscriptions on the emulsion of the film. Printing the photographs as negatives and inverting light to dark, I disrupt conventional modes of ecological representation and challenge expectations of photographic truth, clarity and control. 

Developing the film in my kitchen sink, I embrace the Sufi archetype of the Wise Fool—valuing humility, improvisation, and embodied knowledge over technical mastery. This becomes a devotional practice of attuning my attention to mystery, and inviting chance as a collaborator. I am drawn to how alchemy of the most mundane materials can evoke both the microscopic and the cosmic. In DEVOTIONS, photography becomes both inquiry and ritual: a way of listening for revelations and a reflection on material alchemy, ecological reverence, and deep time.

© Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project
i

‘One Big Eye.’ Gelatin silver fiber print. 20x24 in. This photograph was taken through a circular hole on the bark of a fallen branch in the Pando forest. It references a local story about how the scars on Pando’s stems resemble eyes that gaze back at humankind. The forest of eyes, according to the legend, is “One Big Eye.”

© Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project
i

‘As One They Quake.’ Gelatin silver fiber print. 16x20 in. This photograph was captured as a positive and printed as negative on gelatin silver paper in the darkroom. In the final image, day becomes night and the clear sky pulses with textures due to the artifacts from the homemade coffee-based developer.

© Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project
i

‘The Breath within the Breath.’ Gelatin silver contact print. 8x72 in. This continuous image was taken on a single roll of 35mm film at dusk on the autumn equinox at Pando. With the camera on my chest, I held the shutter open, advancing the film through the camera as I turned my body to complete a circle, timed with my breath.

© Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project
i

‘The Breath within the Breath’ (contact print detail). The full moon is caught as a zigzag line on film from the movement of my body in a circle. Like the devotional circular dance of the Sufi dervishes that induces a trance-like state, I wanted to capture this ancient forest-of-one tree through an embodied act.

© Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project
i

‘The Breath within the Breath’. Inkjet print on archival Japanese asuka paper. 6x360 in. Installation view. An accordion book made from scanning the 35mm roll of film of the same name. The book is displayed on a custom-made birch low table along with cushions, inviting viewers to kneel to see this continuous image of Pando.

© Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project
i

'Puncture’. Gelatin silver fiber print. 11x14 in. This full moon was printed from a single frame of 16mm motion picture film. The image of the moon measures 1x1 inch. This was shot during a full moon night at the Pando forest in Utah and hand-processed by the same coffee-based developer as other photographs.

© Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project
i

'Zikr I'. Gelatin silver fiber print. 12x16 in. Multiple exposures in the darkroom that form a collage on a single sheet. Made from single frames of 16mm motion picture film and double frames of 35mm still film, measuring 1x1 inch squares and 1x3 inch rectangles.

© Sobia Ahmad - 'Threshold'. Gelatin silver fiber print. 12x16 in.
i

'Threshold'. Gelatin silver fiber print. 12x16 in.

© Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project
i

'Zikr II'. Gelatin silver fiber print. 12x16 in. Multiple exposures in the darkroom that form a collage on a single sheet. Made from single frames of 16mm motion picture film and double frames of 35mm still film.

© Sobia Ahmad - Image from the DEVOTIONS photography project
i

‘In Search of First Fire,’ Gelatin silver fiber print. 11x14in. Moths circling a light; exploring a Sufi parable about a group of moths falling in love with a flame. This metaphor describes unity with the Beloved, an ambiguous, archetypal figure signifying a lover or the Divine. This moth-flame phenomenon symbolizes my own journey encircling ideas of Oneness of Pando and photochemical experiments.

© Sobia Ahmad - 'To become dust that sings its melody to the night'. Gelatin silver fiber print. 20x24 in.
i

'To become dust that sings its melody to the night'. Gelatin silver fiber print. 20x24 in.

DEVOTIONS by Sobia Ahmad

Prev Next Close