Last Chance to See - Lumen; the Fragility of Nature

Over the last few years I’ve looked at ways of expressing ideas about climate change through positive photographic images. It’s predicted that we will lose a lot of our native flora over the next generation.

I came across a report about the seed bank at Kew, including the way that that they have preserved plant specimens by pressing them in books. In a similar way I decided to simply lay native plants on old sheets of light-sensitive darkroom paper in sunshine to expose them.

I discovered that an intriguing thing happens during the exposure, in that the sun penetrates by different amounts through different parts of petals and leaves, and in the process, produces a 3D image, like an X-Ray.

Overall, I wanted the resulting images to appear as pressed and preserved flowers, like a childhood memory of a time passed.