Jo Stapleton

A selection of images shot on film and produced using a range of alternative processes including b&W chemigram prints (using b&w darkroom chemistry as a creative tool), cyanotype and Vandyke. Inspired by the Japanese Art of Forest Bathing, Dr Li Quin (1982), who describes a deeper sensory awareness. He states: ‘we know this deep in our bones. It is like an intuition, or an instinct - a feeling that is sometimes hard to describe. In Japanese, we have a word for those feelings that are too deep for words: yugen. Yugen gives us a profound sense of the beauty and mystery of the universe. It is about this world but suggests something beyond it’. Working with the negatives in the darkroom provided an opportunity to remember and creatively reflect upon my photographic experiences in nature. ‘Yugen’ as a sensory experience can be interpreted in a number of ways including environmental (e.g. the wind, temperature, atmosphere or pollution), as a reflection of my own mental state and emotional response, or as a sense of awe (e.g. the passage of time, the beauty of the natural world). Using a range of darkroom processes and techniques including lith, cyanotype and chemigram printing (painting with b&w darkroom chemistry) and photogram objects (including tissue paper, the mesh of a facemask and cellophane), my aim is to explore and visually create the ‘unseen’ but otherwise experienced. In each instance, the choice of process and technique used was a key component of the final image construction.

jo_stapleton_seen_and_unseen (lith prints with tissue paper photogram).jpg

jo_stapleton_photogram_of common_chickweed_on_handcoated_ordinance_survey_map (cyanotype print).jpeg

jo_stapleton_two_preceptions_of_the_lake(original b&w chemigram with cyanotype).jpg

jo_stapleton_remembering_wastwater_lake (b&w chemigram print).jpeg

jo_stapleton_two_cyanotype_jellyfish_with_photogram_string.jpeg

jo_stapleton_the_dissolving_forest (b&w chemigram print).jpeg

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