'The Act of Producing', from the series "The Pigment Change" (2020) Almudena Romero / BMW Residency
For Almudena Romero (Madrid, 1986), photography is not made, it is “cultivated”. Hence the young artist, winner of the 2020 BMW Residency in photography, has used procedures that occur naturally in plants and organic matter to shape her latest photographic project,
The Pigment Change
. The result can be seen in an exhibition curated by François Cheval that is exhibited in the latest edition of the Arles Meetings, in the cloister of San Trófimo. A work that establishes bridges between the past and the present, between photography and nature, to investigate the photographic medium and reflect on sustainability. "What is the role of an artist during an environmental crisis?" Asks the artist.
The trajectory of this young artist has been closely related to the photographic techniques of the 19th century, the century in which the first investigations on plants as photosensitive material took place. It was then that the English mathematician, chemist and astronomer Sir John Herschel, (inventor of cyanotype and other pioneering processes, which he will share with Henry Fox Talbot) discovers how to fix an image using sodium hyposulfite. She would write several treatises on the action of light on plant pigments in close collaboration with the Scottish mathematician and scientist Mary Sommerville (who could not see her published findings because she was a woman). While they were investigating how to make a color photograph, based on whitening vegetable pigments through the effect of light,"They realized that photography made from plant pigments was much more susceptible to deterioration, and that is how more durable chemical photography took its place and allowed the commercial exploitation of the photographic medium," says Romero.
PHOTO GALLERY: The garden of photographs by Almudena Romero
Reading these treatises made the artist consider several things: “Given the environmental deterioration we are experiencing, will the materials we use today exist tomorrow?
Why produce and accumulate in an era of climate emergency in which the production, be it of goods or images, is overwhelming? ”He asks.
Hence, structured in four parts,
The Pigment Change
it is presented as a reflection on photographic creation and materiality, combining many layers and readings.
It takes us from the beginnings of the medium to the present, reviewing concepts such as reproduction, transmission, fragility and durability, concepts that expand beyond what is applicable to the photographic medium, to make us reflect on our relationship with the natural world and the future of our existence.
“I understand photography as a very primitive or etymological process;
like writing with light.
The fact that there may be a camera or a piece of paper, something accessory, is not essential.
Photography is a process, not a result.
Everything that is part of this process is a photographic work, ”says the artist.
Thus in the first part of the project,
The act of producing
, Romero prints the images of his hands on a series of leaves that he subjects to long exposures of sunlight over days or weeks, during which the plant, in order to survive, will break down the chlorophyll pigments (green) to produce carotenoids (yellows). The images will be fixed with resins. "The hands that I print on the sheets are not clearly evident", highlights the photographer. “Sometimes they are almost imperceptible, as were those of my grandmother, who cultivated the land and made the gardens grow. They are invisible female hands, who work the land that will later pass into the hands of others as a true legacy ”. As invisible as were those of Sommerville and those of many other women who did research on botany and photography in the 19th century.
Offspring
arises from the artist's dialogue with her mother to explain her decision not to bring children into the world as a result of the climate crisis. "I think that my position of not leaving offspring in these worrisome environmental circumstances is the result of an instinct for protection, I would say even maternal," Romero clarifies. "I associate it with the selective reproduction strategies used by plants, such as the Welwitschia mirabilis that lives in the desert and only produces two leaves in its entire life." Thus, the author wanted to visually express her position through a sequence of images that, over thirty days, documents the birth of a new leaf in an Alocasia. Similarly, in
Family Album
the photographer projects the negatives of her family album directly onto a vertical panel of watercress crops. The result is presented as a video where their relatives appear and disappear in a reference to our fragility ─as a species, and as individual beings─ as well as to that of the photographic format. Due to their ephemeral nature, all these images will disappear, as will we, hence they serve their author to allude to the idea of the legacy. “For many like my mother, the idea of having a child is linked to the concept of parentage, to something they have built, to the legacy of their family, hence something that is rarely talked about, such as intergenerational justice, young people have the right to be very angry about the environmental heritage that we are going to leave them ”, says the photographer.
'Family Album' belonging to the series 'The Pigment Change' (2020) .Almudena Romero / BMW Residency
Faire une photo
is the last part of the project.
It consists of a two-act photographic performance during which the artist provokes and documents the effects of photoperiod (the reaction of organisms, in this case plants, to adapt to seasonal changes in light) on a poinsettia or flower. Easter.
"If there is no light pollution in cities, this process that involves a change of pigments would occur naturally", warns the artist.
The artist concludes the conversation by referring to the studies carried out by the neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso that “suggest that plants do have intelligence.
Not only is it good to speak them, but they communicate, pass on information and play games ”, emphasizes the author.
“It is a new and revolutionary perspective, not without criticism, which suggests that perhaps humans are not so different and special.
Perhaps our opportunity for a sustainable future comes through this new vision. "
The Pigment Change
.
Almudena Romero.
Cloister of San Trófimo.
The Meetings of Arles (France).
Until August 29.
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