Inhabiting Emulsion, 2023 (ongoing)
Inhabiting Emulsion is an ongoing series of photographic experiments visualising my attempts to collaborate with fungus through the material of 35mm black and white film. By shooting images on the film within local bushland and then burying them underground or exposing them to soils sample from the site, I investigate the potential for an ecosystem to play an active role in self-visualisation. Soft networks of fungus begin to explore and consume the gelatin layer of the film, augmenting and obscuring the image that I intended to capture. Simultaneously the film’s emulsion is softened by moisture and begins to peel away, leaving the images balancing between decomposition and growth. There is an ambiguous continuity between organism, material and artist throughout the series. The film becomes a lively ecology, inviting and celebrating contamination and collaboration.
Weeks or months after initially shooting a roll of film, I process it and can look at the images for the first time. Gently unravelling the long string of film off the spools is a tense but joyful experience. The fungal growth I witness seems to shift and evade my expectations with each roll I process. The film becomes a three-dimensional terrain. Sometimes if soil is in constant contact with a piece of film the fungus will fill the entire surface of the material, transforming it into a craterous landscape that looks like an abstract render of the surface of the moon, a strange topography. Other times if the soil is too moist, or the film is left marinating in the sample for too long, the emulsion will simply fall off the plastic layer of the material. It is a delicate balance – the cultivation of growth and the fine line where both material and image are destroyed.