Statement:
As my practice became more thoughtful of and more centered on the more than human worlds in which my work had already been entangled, I wanted to find a way to more greatly acknowledge them. The more than human entities that had been previously my subjects, now are more consciously my collaborators. With that in mind and a very naïve notion, I want to know what these more than human entities were seeing? How did they see? What views were they taking in? What pictures would they make?
Without an intermediary device (camera) that might skew the view, I choose to work directly, using paper with light sensitive minerals embedded into it without development only stabilization. The minerals themselves an added element to the collaborative nature of the process.
Situating the paper within, among, under and upon various surfaces in the forested environment in which my practice operates, they are left for an unpredeterminate time. A picture is formed, not a human type conventional formally realistic image but one rendered as an abstraction. The picture (the paper coated in light sensitive minerals) contained (for photographs are containers) within it a record of the interactions of light, time, heat, energy, and atmosphere. In other words, it registers existence.
Made visible are the interactions between sunlight streaming through the forest’s leafy apertures and the elemental minerals embedded in the photographic material. The forest light activates the molecules to form a record of its existence in a similar way that that the light aids in the decomposition and regeneration of the forest.
Each photographic object constructed in such a way reveals exactly what the more than human sees.
