In April 2021, I was awarded a Developing Your Creative Practice (DYCP) grant to research the impact of environmentalism on people of colour, a subject that is new to me but it is something that I had been wishing to investigate in my practice. I have spent this time researching and engaging with this topic.

My aim was to use the time and funds to reflect on how I can facilitate a workshop for communities of colour to process their thoughts about climate change and the implications this has on their lives. I have been using my experiences by exploring London’s various woodlands and parks as a place as a case study to understand the themes that I wanted to explore as part of my grant.

This felt appropriate before I engage in activities/workshops with other people. I wanted to know exactly what I wanted to do and what the implications would be on my practice. My blog reflects my thoughts and different approaches I have been engaging with over the course of the 8-9 months since I was awarded my grant.

Back to basics

Marie Smith July 2, 2021

I’ve been talking about making work and the process of other people being engaged with their work - whether that be a garden or portraiture. I’ve been exploring ideas from my archives and I’ve also been thinking about alternative ways of working and the possibilities of working with historical photography practices. I have previously worked with Cyanotypes and working in the way always feels like I am going back to basics.

I start by making the chemicals to make the cyanotype which will cover the paper which will need to be stored in the dark before I can use it. As it’s summer this is the best and also the worst time to do it. It takes ages to get dark, well dark enough for me to go to work coating the paper in the photographic mixes - I do this on the floor and on the back of a hard surface as it’s quite a messy process.

Once I have completed this process I make a move to quickly move the paper - in the dark to a cupboard where it will take a day or two for the paper to dry. After those few days, I wait again for it to go dark before I bring it back out and store it in a black lightproof bag.

And then I wait for the sun…. which comes eventually …

In the meantime, I have printed some images onto clear transfer paper which has a plastically feel but would work as a negative to use for the Cyanotypes, but the paper I have prepared is smaller than the prints and the images on the transfer paper are not dark enough. So I spend a good 2-3 hours painting over the lines of the photo with Japanese black ink to create a new image a new negative so the work has evolved even further from its initial point. I now have two sets of negatives but in different evolutionary stages, it seems that I have moved into new terrain for me and I am happy to be finding further potential in analogue photography.

This week we had a bright morning, I woke up blurry-eyed and sensed that I must take the opportunity, luckily I had enough sun for an hour before I started work to get the Cyanotypes done. One hour. Not long but long enough to see if my strategy to re-paint the lines had worked and they did, next time I will need more sun and more time but I am happy it worked. Just need to prepare some paper for next time. I’ve also enjoyed working with my hands and the slowness of it all, I will look to see what comes next and I will certainly be exploring cyanotype photography.

I would also recommend the current exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery - Unearthed: Photography’s Roots which provided me with a further impetus to engage with historical photographic methods. I welcomed the opportunity to be back in a gallery again. I particularly enjoyed Anna Atkins and her luminous Cyanotypes from over 100 years ago that document the sea and plant life of Victorian Britain. Next to Atkins, Cecilia Glaisher Albumen print’s fern prints provided a lovely contrast - striking and detailed I felt that both Atkins and Glaisher had made me think about locality and what I could source for my own work. The Photogravures of Karl Blossfeldt’s precise and beautifully executed, timeless quality made me reflect on the permanence of photography.

The resistance of basic is of historical photography.

Here are the negatives which I used to make Cyanotypes, I ended up cutting them again, using the lines created from the college to retain a reference to the original form. A collaboration between modern and historical photo methods

And here are the results, the transfer were not left on for long as the light started to hide behind a cloud, I also think maybe the cyanotype mixture was a bit weak as I didn't use much initially and I was trying to be frugal. More to learn for next time, that’s if the sun returns.