ARTIST 1: HANNAH FLETCHER

The Sustainable Darkroom is an artist run research, training and mutual learning community. They are developing low-toxicity chemistries and practices in analogue photography, in order to use less damaging products.

Hannah Fletcher is the founder of this project, The Sustainable Darkroom, and began it in 2019. During this one day workshop with Fletcher she revealed how she creates this sustainable products to develop photographs.

ARTIST 2: ALEXANDER MOURANT

Alexander Mourant is an artist, educator and writer based in London. The work of Alexander Mourant embraces autobiography, literature and reference-based thinking, to create narratives that question the relationship between the body and the photographic medium. 

Mourant also works with Fletcher on this Sustainable Darkroom as the subordinate/assistant photographer. They both try to create a sustainable way to create art and photography.

WORKSHOP: METHOD CHEMIGRAMS/SUSTAINABLE DARKROOM

Arriving at Greve de Lecq Hannah Fletcher gave a overview of the project, The Sustainable Darkroom, in which she explained how she has managed to create renewable ways to develop art and photography.

As a group we went down to the beach to collect seaweed, which Fletcher said would be used as a natural developer. Yet there is a specific criteria the seaweed needs to meet, it needed to include the bubble bits on the length of the seaweed. Furthermore then we went into Greve de Lecq woods to pick up leaves to create chemigrams, the leaves would be used as a print on the image.

WHAT IS A CHEMIGRAM?

A chemigram is made by painting with chemicals on photographic paper.  It requires the use of materials from silver halide-based photography (light-sensitive paper, developer, and fixer).

In order to do our chemigrams sustainably, from the collected seaweed we boiled it for 10minutes in order to get the minerals we needed for the natural developer. Furthermore we mixed ‘vitamin C’ powder and a chemical to create the fixer. We used tools such as pipets, spray bottles, wax and sponges to create different designs. We used the developer and the mixer to create different colours, we also used this process with the leaves and flattened them.

MY RESPONSE TO CHEMIGRAMS:

WHAT IS FEMININITY AND MASCULINITY?

FEMININITY – qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of women or girls.

MASCULINITY – qualities or attributes regarded as characteristic of men or boys.

WHAT IS BINARY OPPOSITION?

The themes of ‘FEMININITY and MASCULINITY’ are a binary opposite – a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning.

Ferdinand de Saussure, the binary opposition is the “means by which the units of language have value or meaning; each unit is defined against what it is not”.

https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=122#:~:text=According%20to%20Ferdinand%20de%20Saussure,against%20what%20it%20is%20not%E2%80%9D.

Binary opposition originated with Ferdinand de Saussure structuralist theory in Linguistics. According to De Saussure, binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another.

EXAMPLES OF BINARY OPPOSITES:

HOW CAN IDENTITY BE INFLUENCED?

ENVIRONMENT/UPBRINGING – This can affect your identity due to how you have been raised, and what values you have been brought up with. It is difficult to change your views after a period of time with how someone else had build these into you.

CULTURAL IDENTITY – Cultural identity can mean a various of things; nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, and religion. Their are many wars that have been created due to different beliefs and stereotypes people have been taught to know. Stereotypes include that; black people are ‘dangerous’ and more likely to cause trouble, after George Floyds death many people unionised and created the BLM movement to contradict this stereotype.

LOSS OF IDENTITY – People that may have lost a part of themselves, or changes who they are: eg. transgender, different pronouns, mental illness, or going through a trauma , may have a different view on identity. This could vary from people that have experienced themselves, people who know people that have experienced something, or people that feel empathetic.