Ghost of A Plant

A unique alternative photographic process response to climate change, situated in the inciting incident of the 2019 Australian bushfires.

In December 2019 at the peak of the Australian bushfires I drove through the inland highways, documenting metamorphosis of the environment in fresh regeneration zones. Through this process the landscape revealed its capacity for resilience and adaptation in the face of climate change. I was witnessing the process of restoration after the fires as a sort of ecological alchemy. A process of transformation where regeneration is dictated by current environmental policies.

It is widely accepted amongst climate activists that the knowledge of, and respect for the land held by First Nations Indigenous Australians must be honoured and incorporated into these policies if we are to survive. Policies based in reverence, care and custodianship that centre the health of the environment above all are needed. And yet Australia’s carbon emissions - already outranking the US - are set to be responsible for 17% of global emissions by 2030 should current government fossil fuel expansions be realized.

Knowing that photography has historically been an essential component for social change while also operating as a metaphor for human perception, I spent the subsequent years developing a unique alternative printing process. One that speaks to the transformative qualities of nature, the impermanence of humanity and the similitude between them. Photographic chemistry is combined with contact botanical printing to create living photographic prints. As the chemistry reacts to sunlight, the silk diptychs flourish with colour. Eventually darkening to an earthy, ruddy brown where only the botanical transfers remain visible. The spectral flora forms bloom from their shifting environments, reminiscent of regeneration zones where plants erupt with new growth from their own scorched, skeletal structures.

By situating the photographic as something that originates in and is responsive to nature rather than the camera, I am striving to develop a photographic language that operates as an analogy for our times. One where a dialogue between nature and our self-prescribed separation from it in Western cultures can be activated and challenged.