Description
Chemigrams are ambiguous and inconsistent. I discovered this when I first did them, and interestingly enough it became the reason why I enjoyed them so much. It is impossible to produce two of the same prints, because the chemigram process reintroduces something traditional photography as we know it lacks: room for human error. A manual, hands on element that reintroduces the “artist's touch” to something otherwise meant to be perfect and untouched. There was no uniformity to my prints and the process itself — no two prints were alike, and there were several instances in which I “broke the rules” of analogue processing: mixing chemicals, performing steps out of order and even repeating some, and purposefully under-developing prints. In some ways, the unpredictability of chemigrams is reminiscent of the nature of birding itself.
When combined with the subject matter, the chemigram elements in my prints become an analogy to human influence. The clash between the harsh chemicals of the darkroom against the delicate images of nature is not lost to me, and is in fact the core of this project. How do they speak to each other? Do they yell, or is it a whispering conversation? Do they exist in harmony, or are they destructive upon each other?
If birding is a branch of photography dedicated to the “perfect moment,” what does that mean for these prints, which have been made to intentionally obscure that moment?