PLANT

This work is a revisit of the cyanotype, a photographic printing process that was discovered in 1842 by the English scientist and astronomer Sir John Herschel.

PLANT brings together the two main historical representational functions of the cyanotype and the historic connotations of each function.

By applying the Cyanotype process to algae in 1843, Anna Atkins, the first female photographer, discovered a precise representational method for the documentation of plant life. By placing the original non-mounted and dried algae directly on the cyanotype paper, Atkins made a cyanotype photogram that was contact printed. She created a limited series of cyanotype books that documented ferns and other plant life. Her book, Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, published in October 1843, is considered the first book illustrated with photographic images.

In the 20th century, cyanotype was used in engineering circles. The simple and low-cost process enabled them to produce large-scale copies of their work, referred to as blueprints. Until 1950, blueprint was the only low cost process available for copying drawings. The process was put to widespread use immediately, notably in shipbuilding and the manufacture of railway locomotives and rolling stock.

In PLANT, every print is produced by the juxtaposition of an actual plant and the architectural ground plan of a nuclear factory (power plant). The final outcome is an image of a hybrid identity that oscillates between forms of documentation of nature and the mass production culture of technical drawing copies.

By looking back at the Cyanotype scientific invention that on the one hand enabled mass production of technical drawings and shaped the new world (ships and railways and buildings) and on the other altered human perception in how to view nature (through the flattened, monochrome image of the plant and the precision of its outline), PLANT is used as a format to reflect on the relation of nature versus culture today.