reach into the soil: settler colonial trauma and reciprocity with the land

A concertina book, completely hand made. Original photographs taken on film, and developed in homemade alternative/sustainable developer caffenol. Printed with cyanotype chemistry, then toned using black tea and mānuka dye.

‘reach into the soil: settler colonial trauma and reciprocity with the land’, in a concertina artist book made up of 39 photographs. Completely hand-made, I printed each cyanotype (totalling about 17 hours labour!) then bleached and toned them all. I cut and folded the concertina book myself, then mounted the 200 prints into the five books! Laid out flat, the book is just over 6.5m.

The beauty of this, is that every single image is completely unique - despite it all beginning with the same negative! I’ve come to learn that no matter the amount of consistency and rigour I force upon the process, every image will be slightly different. This is what is so special about sustainable photography, especially in the context of landscape photography. It feels more genuine to represent or work with the landscape using sustainable photography, because of this uniqueness and complete disregard for visual consistency! 

In sequencing the book, I focused on the forms in the photographs as well as the content. Trying to disperse the self-portraiture throughout the more documentary-landscape photographs. With all the photos laid out like this, you can see the different perspectives  - a low angle, or a wider view. 

The book opens with a creek-side scene, and ends with the same scene, but with me in the frame - softened in movement and stepping down onto the stones. I made this decision as I felt it illustrated my experience with this project. With the intention to investigate and understand a space, and instead, I realised that it was the landscape that understood me, and it was only through knowing myself, that I could know the landscape.