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.
