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In tandem with the creation of INTO THE OCEANIC, an immersive project from artists Elizabeth Ogilvie & Robert Page commissioned for COP26 in Glasgow, I led a series of public engagement workshops with youngsters from four schools along Fife’s varied coastline. These exploratory group activities generated creative responses to the coastal environment and invited children to consider their relationship with the sea.
Lockdown provided the perfect opportunity to reconnect with our immediate landscapes and rediscover our childhood ability to seek intrigue, wonder and materials on our doorstep, without venturing too far to find them.
The coastline of Fife was once the backdrop for a thriving kelp industry (kelping is believed to have originated in Fife in the 1600s) that supported advancements in industries like glass, soap, textiles and agriculture. Many of the alternative processes in photography that were discovered during the 18th and 19th centuries are relatively underexplored, due to accelerated advancements in early photography.
Our groups foraged for materials in an ‘open air’ coastal studio and experimented with alternative photography techniques that required no chemicals or camera equipment – achieving sustainable results using a ‘green dark room’ and through fascinating processes reliant on the natural alchemical qualities of coastal plant life and sea salt.
Participants made use of ‘defunct’ out of date B&W photographic paper and incorporated locally foraged seaweed and plants to make natural photographic emulsions and developers. They created anthotypes, lumens, cyanolumens and chemigrams using camera-less processes and explored ways of ‘souping’ their images with a mixture of acidic and alkaline household contaminants to mimic changes in our oceans.
Groups explored slow photography by creating coastal inspired cyanotypes on algae, swabbing the tideline, and seeing how the growing cultures creep, disrupt and eventually destroy their images over time. Images were fixed using hand-harvested sea salt collected locally. A further hands-on element included making cordage from foraged coastal weeds and grasses, incorporating these creations into our plummet samples. Children had the opportunity to consider life cycles and themes of impermanence, as well as the lasting traces of human activity upon the natural world, that are often invisible to the naked eye.
Children can rarely access traditional darkrooms in modern schools, so an approach that moves away from harmful chemicals and relies instead on sustainable plants/seaweeds/edibles has great potential – widening access to photography and limiting the associated environmental impact. This green approach to photography enables a widely inclusive route and important shift towards a more sustainable photography practice in our current climate.
These techniques can be the stimulus for exciting innovations in photography that resonate with the environmental and societal landscape of contemporary life, providing an accessible route towards more sustainable practice as an artist.
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With special thanks to Darren Peattie from East Neuk Salt Co. for donating his beautiful local salt for this project; Jayson Byles from East Neuk Seaweed for sharing his seaweed foraging expertise; Susan McGuire (care experience coordinator at Fife College) for her invaluable assistance; and all of the participating students from Madras College, Levenmouth Academy, Waid Academy & Lundin Mill Primary School in Fife, all of whom approached the project with great exuberance!
