A different kind of plant photography

Plants are good chemists. They synthesize many different molecules for their own purposes. Of course, we know this, and we use these properties in cooking, and sometimes to alter the insect ecosystems that live in our gardens. That said, it’s hard to take the creation of these chemicals literally, to understand that that they are as real as the stuff you might buy at the hardware store.

Let me introduce you, then, to Oakland photographer Beatrice Thornton. Her practice revolves around making teas from foraged plants and then using those to replace the industrial components of darkroom photography. She’s part of a movement, centered in the UK for sustainable photography. But outside the environmental implications, I find the concept of taking a photograph of a plant and then developing and printing it with that plant’s own materials to be thrilling.

If you want to hear about this live, the good news is that Bea and I are doing an event at Clio’s in Oakland with Amy Burek, who runs Awkward Ladies Club. (Her work My Favorite Microbes was one of the first tiny books I featured.)

The event is tomorrow, Monday, October 30, at 6pm. Get some tickets!

Thornton’s work, which will be showing at Clio’s after a run at the Oakland library, is often softer than the high-def landscapes and plant photographs you see on Instagram Reels. Above, you can see one of the images from Place Non Place, a beautiful panorama of 12 prints she’s made with her home-brew processes.

Sometimes, Thornton will develop with loquat leaves, vitamin C, and washing soda. Sometimes it’ll be foraged elderberries. The key is to find plants that are high in polyphenols, which take the place of Kodak formulations like D-76. There are many different possible recipes, and of course, the plants themselves are going to vary in potency. She prints, too, with these plant teas.

The pixel-peeping perfection of digital photography has been a real advance. I cannot believe what a CCD can capture sometimes. But I also have found myself returning to an old film camera that I got from my father-in-law. Yes, it’s precious. Each photo has a value. You can’t just spray and pray that you got the right image. And that puts me in a different state of mind. Also, I’ve realized how much I’ve come to depend on the fakery that lies inside every phone and camera now. There is so much processing that goes into any old digital photo now before you even look at it. Night Shot or the algorithms Apple runs on skin or even just cranking up the ISO on your camera to 12000 all change how you can make pictures. But maybe a few limitations, doing it by hand, can feel electrifying against the backdrop of such technological marvel.

Thornton and I met up along Sausal Creek a few weeks ago, and talking with her about her work, it’s clear that the development and printing process that she has chosen affects what she shoots. The technique captures beautiful overlapping shadows, but maybe not an ultra sharp portrait.

At the same time, her need for her actual darkroom materials has led her to see the landscape differently. The polyphenolscape has opened up before her. And you can learn to see it, too. She teaches workshops. Or you can come to our event, of course. (Monday! 6pm! Clio’s in Oakland!)

Cuttings

• Extremely cool work that Bea sent over from LA’s Metabolic Studios: “‘Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production’ is dedicated to the material history of key resources used for image production, adressing the social and political context of their extraction and waste and its relation to climate change.”

• I am going to recommend Twilight Greenaway’s Substack, The Window, over and over. I predict we’ll see a lot of dumb climate media in the next decade, so you’ll need people like Twilight you can trust.

• Liat Berdugo’s Seeing It For the Trees

• A new PNAS paper suggests complexity as a physical law: “We suggest that all evolving systems—including but not limited to life—are composed of diverse components that can combine into configurational states that are then selected for or against based on function.”

• I continue to love everything about the Sibley labyrinth, every inch of its weirdness is earned.