This practice-led research project entitled “Taking Photographs Beyond the Visual: Paper as a Material Signifier in Photographic Indexicality” explores the status of photographs as physical traces rather than purely as images. The resulting works test the ability of photographs to operate beyond conventionalised system of meanings to express embodied experience of landscape as a meeting point of the human subject and the more-than-human, sensuous dimension of the physical surroundings.
Despite the fact that photographs come into being as material objects imprinted with light reflected off the subject in front of the camera, and therefore possess a decidedly physical link to their referent, the materiality of photographs tends to be overlooked in favour of apprehending them as primarily visual signs independent of their physical support. The work in this project is an attempt to find ways in which embodied experience of remote natural locations could be expressed more fully than it is possible by means of purely visual representation. The making of each piece involved an absurdly laborious and time-consuming process of hiking to an alpine location, making paper on-site from local plants and – using only the inherent light-sensitivity of plant substances – exposing it for many days in a camera built there from found natural materials.
The resulting photographic objects function as pure indices in the semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce’s understanding of the term – as traces that point to their causes without necessarily revealing anything about the nature of the latter. They are artefacts testifying primarily through their presence, rather than through pictorial representation, to the exposure having taken place. Such process of signification requires the viewer’s active, haptic and imaginative response. The work proposes a way of photographically representing place as elemental – that is, existing outside the human schema of production, consumption and meaning – instead of through such cultural constructs as ‘landscape’ or ‘the scenic’.
The full PhD thesis is available for download here.
2013 (final body of works, 24 in total; photographic objects – grass paper made on-site and exposed photographically in a camera built there largely out of natural found materials, using light sensitivity of plant pigments present in the paper):
| Fuorcla Radönt, towards Vadret da Radönt, Engadin, Switzerland, 2700m a.s.l., 22 Aug – 4 Sep 2013 |
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| Lai Blau in Val Tuoi, towards Piz Fliana, Engadin, Switzerland, 2620m a.s.l., 14-25 July 2013 |
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| Val Sesvenna, towards Piz d’Immez, Engadin, Switzerland, 2530m a.s.l., 24 Jul – 6 Aug 2013 |
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| Lai da Juata, towards Muntet, Engadin, Switzerland, 2240m a.s.l., 30 Jun – 10 Jul 2013 |
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| Val Plavna, towards Piz Stabelchod, Engadin, Switzerland, 1940m a.s.l., 9-17 June 2013 |
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| Val d’Urezzas, towards Jamspitz, Engadin, Switzerland, 2150m a.s.l., 25 Jun – 1 Jul 2013 |
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| Val Urschai, towards Piz Faschalba, Engadin, Switzerland, 2120m a.s.l., 21 Jun – 1 Jul 2013 |
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Film showing the making of the works:
Installation shots:
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I have subsequently realized commissioned bodies of similar site-specific work on the coast of the Isle of Portland, Dorset, UK, for the b-side festival (September 2014) and in the vicinity of the city of Umea in the north of Sweden for the Survival Kit festival (October 2014).
b-side festival, Portland
The work explores ways in which a photographic object can begin to communicate a complex and embodied experience of locations along the coast of Portland that far exceeds the purely visual. In an absurdly laborious and time-consuming endeavour – working entirely outdoors with natural found materials – the artist made paper from local plants and exposed it for long periods of time in primitive cameras built out of rocks. Only the inherent light-sensitivity of plant substances was used. The cameras were sited in multiple locations around the coast and they all pointed to the horizon, imprinting the paper inside with the subtle light differences between the sky and the sea. The resulting installation invited the viewers to make a journey to a stone hut in the East Weares area, a 20 minutes walk north of Church Ope Cove, and experience the landscape first hand. There they discovered the photographic artefacts that not so much depicted as embodied the places out of which they were made, encapsulating at the same time in their material form the duration of the exposures. A film screened in the hut gave a glimpse of the artist’s involvement with the environment in the process of creating the works. The public was also invited to join guided walks with the artist and the Portland Ranger around the East Weares area and to the installation site.
Installation shots:
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Survival Kit festival, Umea, Sweden
These works were made along four main rivers in the Västerbotten region. Rivers played a crucial role in the establishment of human presence in the area, serving as sources of energy, means of transportation, sources of food, etc. It therefore seemed particularly fitting to represent them from a non-human perspective, as entities possessing their own agency in the creative process of making the work.
Installation shots:
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Earlier works in the project – 2012
(photographic objects: grass paper made on-site and exposed photographically in a camera built there largely out of natural found materials, using historic direct positive photographic processes; films documenting the making of each piece in the right-hand column):
| Lai da Minschun, Engadin, Switzerland, 2642m a.s.l., 19 and 30 Jul 2012 |
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| Val Tasna, Engadin, Switzerland, 1850m a.s.l., 6-7 Aug 2012 |
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| Tiral, under Piz Tasna, Engadin, Switzerland, 2587m a.s.l., 18-20 Sep 2012 |
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| Pass da Costainas, Engadin, Switzerland, 2280m a.s.l., 23-25 Sep 2012 |
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| Cortal de la Plana, Vall de la Comella, Andorra, 1600m a.s.l., 8-9 Apr 2012 |
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| Cortal de la Plana, Vall de la Comella, Andorra, 1600m a.s.l., 8-9 Apr 2012 |
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| Vall del Madriu, Andorra, 1400m a.s.l., 10-12 Apr 2012 |
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| Font del Bosc Negre, Andorra, 1400m a.s.l., 11-13 Apr 2012 |
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Earlier works in the project – 2011
(direct positive photographs sensitized, exposed and processed on-site in a ‘hole in the ground’ camera; films documenting the making of each piece in the right-hand column):
| Hole 01 Exposure 02, Solothurn, Switzerland, 1 Oct 2011 |
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| Hole 02 Exposure 03, Solothurn, Switzerland, 3 Oct 2011 |
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| Hole 03 Exposure 05, Solothurn, Switzerland, 11 Oct 2011 |
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| Hole 05 Exposure 12, Solothurn, Switzerland, 20 Oct 2011 |
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| Hole 06 Exposure 09, Solothurn, Switzerland, 17 Oct 2011 |
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| Hole 07 Exposure 10, Solothurn, Switzerland, 18 Oct 2011 |
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| Hole 08 Exposure 11, Solothurn, Switzerland, 20 Oct 2011 |
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| Hole 09 Exposure 19, Solothurn, Switzerland, 26 Oct 2011 |
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| Hole 10 Exposure 20, Solothurn, Switzerland, 29 Oct 2011 |
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