I am a photographer who does not use a camera!
My subjects are botanical, but the resulting images are not simply straightforward representations of plant life. My aim is to present the commonplace in an unfamiliar way which encourages the viewer to engage with the tremendous beauty and diversity of the natural world. Many of the subjects are tiny scraps of seeds or flowers which are enlarged to show their intricate details and which brings them into the realm of wonder. Often these are set on deep black backgrounds so that they glow like expensive pieces of jewellery, precious and highly prized. Others bring to mind mysterious underwater sea creatures, and are intriguing and often confusing.
There is an obvious combination of science and art in my work which reflects my early training as a scientist. After several years of peering down microscopes as a microbiologist, I eventually became a teacher of biology, intent on communicating my love of living things to a succeeding generation. In recent years I have immersed myself in exploring the more archaic avenues of photography and sharing my fascination with different ways to present everyday subjects.
To produce these images I use a variety of techniques which would have been familiar to the early pioneers of photography, but I am able to give them a contemporary twist by innovations such as the use of colour. The cameraless processes include photograms, scanograms and cyanotypes; the names can seem off-putting, but the techniques all rely on using the interaction of actual plant material with light or light-sensitive surfaces. In photograms the surface is colour photographic paper and the light source comes from an enlarger in a dark-room, while in cyanotypes the surface is paper coated with chemicals and the light source is sunlight. In both these cases, the final image is unique, analogous to a monoprint which a painter might produce. Scanograms are most akin to images produced by a digital camera as the tiny specimen is placed on a scanner and results in a digital file.
My work has been featured in such diverse publications as an RHS calendar and Collection 8 of the international Garden Photographer of the Year, when my portfolio of 6 photograms was highly commended. My work has been shown in two solo exhibitions: at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire in 2017 and at Dimbola Lodge, on the Isle of Wight (the home of Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron) in 2018. I have also participated in numerous group exhibitions in Surrey.