What's next?

I want to go back to my initial post and the questions that I posed myself which was the aim of my research and the purpose of this blog:

I will spend the next six months researching and engaging with this topic and seeing how nature and environmentalism can be engaging people from communities of colour. I want to find people in my local community of Brixton, South London to see how they think and feel about climate change.

On reflection, I think that I have been able to stick to the main aims and objectives of my initial blog but I have seen myself shift and starting to absorb and be more considerate to what I was trying to do with my practice and research goals.

I was a bit ambitious, especially regarding the community engagement element, this is only something that I am beginning to shape and I am working on a series of workshops that I will be initiating this summer. I will also be embarking on a residency - New Forest National Park Artist in Residence with an organisation called SPUD Works, this residency will culminate with an exhibition in October 2022.

I have found that my practice and my ideas and responsibilities have shifted immensely and I don’t see myself going back to how I used to work. I won’t be working in colour photography anymore (as not part of ‘my work’) as the cost and environmental factors mean that this is not a sustainable way for me to work. I also have more autonomy developing, scanning, and making work at home in my own darkroom and I have found that I have been resourceful with the work that I am making. I definitely feel comfortable and certain of myself with the avenue that I wish to take my practice.

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Image taken from the series, The Wanderer, December 2021, ©Marie Smith

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I have made a new series of work, titled The Wanderer, a body of work that consolidates all of my research ideas and poses a new aesthetic that will be explored further in the workshops and residency.

I am now able to answer and provide more context to what I was initially interested in researching and will be looking to make the process of my work as engaging and collaborative, I will be using my working methodology from Whispering for help to aid the work and residency as I believe that I have developed some good transferable skills that I would like to expand upon. I will be working on my project proposal and identifying the demographics that I wish to work with.

I now have a better understanding of terms such as nature, sustainability, and climate change and how it applies to my work, therefore I can now start implementing those terms into my practice. I am excited and also feel buoyant about what is coming next for me and my practice. My focus has shifted and I am grateful that I was given the opportunity and funding to explore a new area that seemed very abstract to me until now.

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Image taken from the series, The Wanderer, December 2021, ©Marie Smith

Interview with Season Butler - we discuss her novel Cygnet, community and what is nature and not nature?

I’ve been doing a lot recently, more than I can process so I will try to do one thing at a time. My research has made a rapid growth of late, elements and ideas that I had struggled to articulate now seem to be coming together and I can question what I knew prior to starting research. It seems as though my understanding was quite shallow but this is an opportunity to question and inform myself.

As part of my research, I have reached out to photographers, researchers, writers, and artists with a particular focus on speaking to people of colour to gain insight into their relationship with nature, environmentalism, and landscape. What do these terms mean to them and these subjects have informed their practice?

Last week, I interviewed Season Butler over Zoom, Season is one of five artists that I’ll be talking to over the next few months. Next week I will be in conversation with Myah Jeffers.

I also have interviews lined up interviews with Yan Wang Preston and Zoe Palmer from the dream(ing) field lab.

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Photo taken from a walk to Seven Sisters Cliff, July 2021 ©Marie Smith

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Season Butler is a London-based writer, performance artist, and teacher, and recently completed a Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Season’s debit novel Cygnet was released in 2019 and we spent time talking about her research behind Cygnet and also about her interest in environmentalism, nature, and climate change.

Season was born and grew up in Washington, DC/USA, and part of her childhood was spent preoccupied with environmentalist movements, such as Earth Day. Having a parent who studied herbalist traditions meant that she was brought up in a household that was conscious of nature and plant life. Her parent’s politics/ethics have shaped a mindful awareness of nature and how nature is an intrinsic part of life. Nature is not just part of a rural environment and is not something that is not removed from the city environment.

We spoke about the discourse of environmentalism and climate change, the effects this has on people in the global south in particular, and how capitalism has exacerbated and created uneven power dynamics and structures that means that exploitation of plant life, people, and resources will continue. Climate Change is not the great equaliser and although it is a global issue others are more vulnerable the need for material and pollution that governs our lives are the ultimate means that pre-existing equality is continued rather than address with a way to resolve it.

The interconnection between capitalism and climate change means that we have been walking towards the destruction of the planet and its resources for many decades but this does not mean that the climate change movement is a new phenomenon. Season spoke about engaging in the complexities of the contemporary climate crisis, and that means addressing the intersection between class, race, and age.

Season talked about the history of environmentalism, her awareness of the movement that preceded in particular in the post-war era, and how the movement is in its current iteration has influenced by previous movements and writers. Season cited Silent Spring by Rachel Carson which was written in 1962 when Carson was in her late 40s. There is a perception that people over 65 were not environmentalists but what choices were presented to them - what structures perhaps meant that they were not given choices to take the environment into consideration.

Season also spoke about how the community can be seen as a unit of human survival, a system of people that are considered towards each other and are invested in your survival. Not forgetting the need to thrive even under difficult circumstances. Community is also about being aware of your responsibility toward their survival means that community is not a linear concept and can be quite broad as well.

Season got me to think about what is considered ‘nature’ and ‘not nature’ and the fact that a beehive can be seen as natural but a skyscraper might not be seen as natural although both structures are made from raw material and house a community. Cityscapes are also landscapes and how can I be more expansive with what I consider ‘natural’? We also talked about the lack of access to green space and this got me thinking about why green spaces are so important in cities and how places like Brockwell Park have provided me with an introduction to nature which still continues.

Safety is a concern and for some communities, being in open green spaces might not feel safe or welcoming, this does vary in the context but this can affect your feeling of being from the land and having a relationship with the land.

Lastly, I asked Season what her hopes were for the future and she talked about having effective leadership and finding the most effective ways for us are able to thrive and take action to fight against the essential problems with climate change. To be bold and efficient so that one day the Climate Change movement and so many protest movements can be made obsolete.

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Photo taken from a walk to Seven Sisters Cliff, July 2021 ©Marie Smith

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My conversation with Season has provoked new questions for me, some I had not considered before and some that I had dismissed entirely. For example, how have I decided what is nature and what is not nature? What preconceived ideas have I been carrying around which has been affecting my practice and how can I be more open to what is ‘nature’ and ‘what is not nature’?

The conversation around climate change is not new and the relationship between Black and other ethnic minority communities is not new either. this is something that I have resolved within myself and I have found enough work and writing to solidify that we have a history and a discourse within this canon.

I now need to ensure that I find a spoke to utilise for myself, a space that resonates with me, and somewhere that I am able to build a trusting relationship. I am looking at the end of this research to make a series about a specific space with societies people and until now I have dismissed London but maybe I have been hasty and I have not given enough time to this concept.

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Cyanotype made during Cyanotype workshop at South London Gallery in August 2021 with Alice Cazenave who is a member of The Sustainable Darkroom. The flowers and plant leaves were picked from the Orozco Garden in South London Gallery, ©Marie Smith

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And finally to finish off this week’s blog, I have now completed my workshop at South London Gallery and I have learnt a lot of methodologies and practices that I will carry through with. I have already started to develop black and white film at home with my own plant based developer. I have also learnt some more nuances regarding cyantypes, how you can bleach them (using soda crystals) and dying them (using anything from rosemary to green tea bags).

On reflection with my conversation with Season, this cyanotype was made from plants, flowers found in South London Gallery garden, a wonderful juxtaposition between concrete and nature growth around through and in relation to the concrete rather than against it.

So I can certainly find myself urging towards something that I already thought of but had discredited but I think I need more time to decide if I will carry on this trajectory or whether I should become more focused on what is around and in front of me - can the city landscape provide me with more answers than I anticipated. More exploration will need to be done I think before I can answer.

Happy accidents can yield surprising results

Sometimes accidents can propel you in a whole new direction, one that you did not intend, however it good to also follow through on a process and see what happens. I accidentally messed up the development of my own images during the Plant based developer workshop with Eileen White from Sustainable Darkroom.

I was also unable to use my local lab’s scanner as this would have jammed it as I had cranked the hols of the side of the film when I was winding the film on the developing wheel during the workshop. This meant that the film ended being stuck together and and some area became undefined and under developed. Undeterred I decided to see what I could do with he fit, I also didn’t want to waste the film and consign it to the bin, wondering what if?

So, my local lab at Photofusion suggested that I rent their highly powerful and accurate Imacon scanner, which I did and it was good to use it, was not difficult and I was also to obtain 20 images from a roll of 35 images, not bad!

On inspection at home I decided that it wasn’t worth trying to make the images look accurate and refined, the images were too blurred and I actually liked the fading and distortion that I had created, I added a filter to them - sepia tone which made them look like historical images from 19th century - well not exactly but close enough!

I them printed them off onto reclaimed paper from Photofusion (thank you!) and now I am wondering what to do with them next, I feel I need to keep on with the process and see art can be done, whether that be collages or annotations, writing of some sort. I’ll just play around and see what happens.

Tomorrow I am off for a walk in Chilworth with two friends, both photographers and we ware going to explore the landscape of Surrey! This will be a nice opportunity for me to go for a walk with other women of colour and to also explore a place that is unfamiliar. My aim is to try and capture some portraits of them and of myself, to see what community feels like in this situation and to try and enact some thoughts that have been percolating in my mind of late.

I will them be developing the film and scanning at home myself - I have just bought a flatbed scanner so I am looking to get more agency and autonomy over my working methods, and to save money as well and in the long run it will be better for me.

Images below are scans and prints of the 35mm roll of film from workshop.

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I scanned the film using Imacon scanner which I hired from PhotoFusion for a few hours, the process was simple and I concentrated on scanning the images that had a tangible image on it.

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It was hard to decipher the septic frames so some images ended up needing onto each other unintentionally or the tress were braced but he fact they were not processed correctly.

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First scan and first impression, each frame was different and I had to manage my expectations, although I am intrigued by the process and what could come next, the potential in the image is what is intriguing me.

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Managed to recover some space paper from PhotoFusion that would not go through the printer. the paper is high quality and mixture of fine art, semi gloss and gloss paper. I have cut the paper up to A4 size s that I can feed it through my inject printer at home.

This also means I can be sustainable in my process, experiment and know that nothing is going to waste and that I have freedom to be playful.

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I printed off some of the images, a mixture of contrasts and black and white and the sepia Toine which I changed in Adobe Lightroom, they have a haunting quality and now look more like historical photographs, which is great! I wonder how they will look at collages? Or perhaps the backdrop for a portraits?

Shifting focus

After an intense interview for a Ph.D., I have been thinking about the questions that have been posed to me and the context of my nature. I have a habit of doing too much and trying g to get different strings of ideas together to create something new. This means that my research can be sporadic and chaotic which is not something I ever thought I was.

However this makes sense as someone with the neurodiverse community (I am Dyspraxic) I sometimes find it hard to focus and compartmentalise my ideas, this is something that I’d like to focus on and I believe the DYCP grant will help me do this.

So, what to decide now? It seems I have two avenues to pursue, one is nature and mental health and the impact that eco-anxiety has on communities of colour. With fragmented patches of land/parks which are in the control of local councils, some park has been closed to local communities or in disrepair.

Another pathway is nature and belonging, exploring what is nature and how can we access this with so few opportunities due to money or having no access to a car/train. Feeling overwhelmed by lack of equipment of ideas that nature and English landscape is inherently hostile.

I also feel that I have perhaps not been thinking about what exactly I am going to visualise my research, will it be in the form of photographs? Of people or places? Or will be films or interviews? How do I see myself working in analogue or digital?

I will be looking into making my practice moire sustainable and have bookmarked some courses that I would like to go to, being able to invest in my practice will help me feel more confident and I hope to refine my thought processes more. I’ve also booked a spot to visit Stuart Hall Library which excites me, it’s been a while and I miss the quiet and contemplation that a library offers.

I will also aim to do a post at least once a week over the new few months. This will also help me focus and force me to verbalise my process to myself and also to you.

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An introduction to my research into environmentalism

This blog will be a space for me to reflect on my research as well as document who I am talking to, what I am reading, and who I am making images of - whether that be people or places. I will be engaging with a myriad of methods to inform myself and my practice.

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 is something that I have been wishing to investigate in my practice. As a Black woman living in a polluted city, I know that I and other communities of colour will be disproportionately affected by climate change and pollution.

I will spend the next six months researching and engaging with this topic and seeing how nature and environmentalism can be engaging people from communities of colour. I want to find people in my local community of Brixton, South London to see how they think and feel about climate change.

As a Visual Artist whose primary medium is analogue photography, I believe that I must take responsibility for finding more sustainable ways in my practice. Again, this will help me renew and engage with methods that can be utilised to make my practice more creative as well as cost-saving whilst trying to minimalise my impact on the environment.

I will be using my experience with project managing Whispering for help to network with communities in Brixton and beyond. I have found a plethora of resources on social media and it has been great to see people of colour working to decolonise nature and environmentalism. I will be going to practical workshops and will find ways to make environmentalism engaging and relevant to people of colour.

I suspect I will make mistakes and will find the prospect daunting at times but I am ready to begin a new chapter and to find a way to communicate the importance of climate change and environmentalism, this subject is beyond urgent for me and for people from my community.

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