Wildflowers picked on walks with Bea

These images were created in a camera obscura, a room sized camera that is operated from the inside, using two distinct analogue processes - one is a simple paper negative, the other is produced using a complex colour reversal process. These are wildflowers local to where I live which I collect on morning walks and then carefully arrange in front of the camera to be photographed. Each one is unique, captured direct on to photographic paper. The process is long and laborious and the photographs hard to achieve, it can take up to 8 hours to create a successful exposure. As the ambient temperature in there room shifts, the colour balance fluctuates and the chemical concentration changes so too does the resultant image meaning no two images will ever look the same.

These are representations of flowers of course, but they are also signs of a complex improvisation with chemicals, paper, light and time. I do not know what the image is going to be like at the start of the process; each one is a small revelation. Sometimes the strangeness of the resultant image positions the everyday motif of the flowers in a new hybrid space between the chemical and natural; a fusion of the tradition of art that celebrates the transience of flowers, and a process that steals them away into an uncanny, chromatic image of an apparently permanent and artificial afterlife.

A selection of these images are available to buy in limited edition here.