These prints represent photography at its most basic: the bleaching power of the sun at work on paper. Each is coated in a plant puree: spinach, spirulina, pomegranate, prickly pear, nasturtium, turmeric… Some are grown from seedlings, some foraged, some found at the grocery store. Each coated piece of paper is sandwiched with a transparency-printed image and left in the sun for hours, days, or weeks. The sun slowly fades any exposed surface.

In the scope of the history of photography, the anthotype (flower print) figures as little more than a footnote, with a metaphorical pat on the head (endearing, though unlikely to mature!). As a process, this plant-based printing is both impossible to standardize for commercial distribution and unfixable—not one, but two death knells for an industrialized photographic practice. And a third: tedious exposure times make it impractical for most of the medium’s needs, as they have come to be understood.

As they have come to be understood. Our relationship to photography itself, to both the instantaneity of capture and any presumption of permanence, may need to change as we hover on the precipice of environmental catastrophe. Could the humble anthotype represent our future (gentle, fugitive) experience of photography? Can fading bring joy?

My current obsession focuses on a clock, mostly stuck at 10:10 - as in all watch/clock advertisement. This form of the hands allows the brand name to be framed, with the optimism of a subtle smile form (affectionately known as “Happy Time”). I am fascinated by the tropes of the photographic medium and the assumptions we make in its practice, the ways our vision is quietly mediated. My quest to push against default printing processes figures into the same conversation, for me, as that of this insidious clock time. The occasional Doomsday Clock image joins the mix, stuck ominously at 100 seconds to midnight.