I’ve run two Anthotype workshops in collaboration with The Mobile Camera Club Paris. The most recent was Anthotypes and Mobile Photography for the December 2018 Colloque Mobile et Création “#foodporn, Les ombiles du Désir”, at the Nouvelle Sorbonne University, Paris
A video about my first Anthotype workshop at the Mobile Camera Club in 2015 can be found HERE
In April 2016, I was invited to run Anthotype workshops at Le Bruit de Mon Oeil festival at Port Boyer, Nantes. A video about the project can be found at:
Petit Oeil sur Port Boyer from Le bruit de mon oeil on Vimeo.
Since 2014, I have made annual journeys to Atina: a small and ancient hill town in southern Italy. Most of these trips were made to take part in artist residences organised by The Lumen Group, London: a group of artists who create work that explores our spiritual connection to the Cosmos.
Having made so many trips to the town, I now feel a strong personal connection and have made many friends there. During one of my visits, a friend whose father, like my own, once ran a photographic studio, knowing my deep interest in family histories, asked if I’d like to work with some of the negatives shot in the 1970s and 80s, mainly for the purpose of passports and identity cards. Since then, I’ve been working with the negatives and gradually identifying the names of sitters by means of social network groups.
Last September, the London Alternative Photography Collective (of which I’m a member) made a video about my work with the Anthotype process in which I talk a little more about this ongoing project. It can be found HERE.
In May 2018, I was invited to take part in an exhibition at the Ugly Duck, Bermondsey. Curated by the Lumen Group, London, Cosmic Perspectives invited artists to reflect upon how The Overview has impacted upon our relationship with and understanding of the planet Earth that is our home. Wikipedia describes the over view as:
… a cognitive shift in awareness reported by some astronauts during spaceflight, often while viewing the Earth from outer space… the experience of seeing firsthand the reality of the Earth in space, which is immediately understood to be a tiny, fragile ball of life, “hanging in the void”. The term and concept were coined in 1987 by Frank White, who explored the theme in his book The Overview Effect — Space Exploration and Human Evolution
The Overview theme prompted me to consider how Mankind’s insatiable curiosity has contributed and continues to contribute to the pollution and destruction of many wildernesses and the virtual extinction of the animals that have inhabited them. Viewers of my work often express alarm that Anthotypes are ephemeral artworks with a limited lifespan but don’t always make the connection that the landscapes from which they are made are disappearing at an alarming rate.
Viewers of the installation were invited to consider how the places depicted by the slowly fading Anthotypes have almost all disappeared or are now heavily polluted and the creatures are almost extinct.
Publications such as the Wonder Book of the Wild: the Romance of Exploration and Big Game Stalking, published in the UK from the 1920s until the 1940s celebrated masculine domination of the Earth. Many of the places depicted on its pages have since disappeared or been destroyed by pollution or commercial exploitation of resources. With this in mind, I acquired several copies of the book via Ebay and made Anthotype copies of some of the photographs, then placed them on top of the original prints inside the book.
The Anthotypes created for this installation have since faded away but I can always make more, whereas almost all of the Wonderful places and creatures they depict are condemned forever to be the stuff of memory and dreams.
Anthotypes are the ground zero of Slow photography, yet despite long waits for results, the swift passage of time is brought sharply into focus. Flowers bloom and fade, sometimes within the space of just one day, every sunny hour is an opportunity not to be missed. Working with this beautiful process has honed my appreciation of the garden’s fleeting moments. These two Anthotypes capture rippled reflections on the pond at Painswick Rococo Garden, holding them for just a little longer, before they vanish forever.
Anthotype prints made with Sweet Pea petals from Painswick Rococo Garden and Tamarind Berries from a garden in Rome. Sunlight from my garden in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Anthotype made with flowers from Painswick Rococo Garden, Gloucestershire and sunlight from my garden in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire
I don’t know this lovely woman’s story, although she and her family have been my my life for thirty years, since I purchased a bag of anonymous photographs at Kettering market. However, Cynthia wrote a dedication to her grandmother on the back of the photograph of which this Anthotype is a copy, so at least I know her first name.
Snowdrop leaf Anthotype made with Snowdrops and Spring Water from Painswick Rococo Garden and Sunlight in my Cheltenham garden.
I’ve been very productive today and now have six Anthotypes sunbathing in the back garden. Having finally plucked up the courage to use one of my precious snowdrop leaf papers, I was rewarded with the most delightful surprise. It took just five hours to make this print of my mum. Of course, It’s impossible to capture the shimmering colours of Anthotypes and so what you see here doesn’t do justice to the zingy leaf-greens of the real thing. The darker tone could almost be described as lime.
My mum never wears green because she considers it unlucky, but I think she looks very pretty indeed!
copyright Nettie Edwards @lumilyon 2015
What is love? ’tis not hereafter;
Present mirth hath present laughter;
What’s to come is still unsure:
Still always
In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth’s a stuff will not endure.
William Shakespeare: Twelfth Night
A recently-made Anthotype of my mother as a young woman. The original photograph was taken by my father Brian Edwards. The emulsion was made of berries from an 18th century Mulberry tree at Painswick Rococo Garden. My mother’s name is Violet. The unexposed areas of the Anthotype have remained a bright, almost fluorescent, magenta pink: perfectly fitting for a 60s glamour girl!
Last week, Jasper Johns, one of the gardeners here at Painswick Rococo Garden, gathered up and put aside some fallen petals from the Parrot Tulips that are growing in a border next to the chilly Plunge Pool. These are particularly spectacular specimens and if you’ve visited the garden recently, you will have almost certainly admired their exotic gorgeousness: flame-red with fine green and yellow markings, their deep-cut petals have a frilly, frothy fringed look. They are aptly named “Rococo”, so what could be a more perfect flower for a Rococo Garden Anthotype?
Delighted as I was to receive Jasper’s thoughtful gift, not everyone was happy. Several visitors to my Bothy studio have gasped in horror at the sight of me cutting up such beautiful flowers, even when I explain that they have been saved from the compost heap.
The tulips have yielded some surprising colours, ranging from deep pink-mauve to purple, depending on the paper. The Anthotype below was left out in the Kitchen garden yesterday, whilst around it, gardeners and volunteers toiled in the hot sun, weeding and planting. By 5pm, I had a reasonably good exposure so although it is not my most successful print to date, I decided not to push it any further as the paper had been coated with just two layers of rhubarb-pink coloured dye, of such delicacy that I feared any more sun would bleach the image away completely.
Rules of Engagement: Complicité Tulip Anthotype on Washi Paper Copyright Nettie Edwards 2015
Currently, I have examples of my Anthotype work in two exhibitions: Capturing Light at the Silverprint Gallery in London, features work by a number of contemporary artists who are exploring Alternative Processes as are those featured in Taking Time which is closer to home, at Ruskin Mill, Stroud.
Hortus Lucis 