Over the course of a few years, I made lumen prints during the summer. I just did it for fun, and incorporated a great deal of play and experimentation in the process. And was pleasantly pleased by the richness of the resulting prints.

A lumen print is essentially a photogram, a unique object more akin to a drawing or painting than what we usually consider to be a print (something that can be reproduced precisely a number of times). Although they are made with expired black and white photographic darkroom paper, chemical reactions between the plant material used to form the image, and the paper, result in beautifully unpredictable and often ethereal colour images.

I wanted to push the imagery further, in particular to explore the relationship between these lumen prints, and traditional botanical drawings. After some further experimentation, I developed a series of piezography prints and then was left with the question of what the final output of this re-imagining of the lumen prints would be. And so the piezo prints went up on the studio wall (see top image), where they’ve been for a few months now. I’ve played with scale and presentation and over time I’ve come to a resolution of what the final form of this work will likely be. Now comes the next step in the process, which is test printing the images on different papers to find the best one.

Now it’s time to take these prints down, and move something else from the studio tables onto the wall.