‘Metamorphosis: Innovation in Eco Photography & Film’ will run at the Sloane Square gallery until 28 July and features work from the artists Almudena Romero, Edd Carr, Hannah Fletcher, and Scott Hunter.
All the works on show blend traditional artistic mediums with the goal of eco-friendly practices. Photography has historically been an ecologically wasteful medium – from the unsustainable toxic chemicals used in development to the manufacture and disposal of camera equipment, photography has been relatively environmentally unfriendly.
Participants in the exhibition have shown the ways that the field can be improved. The artists have developed more environmentally friendly techniques as well as conscientious approaches to the materials needed to work.
Almudena Romero, a British-Spanish photographer, “uses naturally occurring photographic processes including photoperiodicity, photobleaching and photosynthesis. The resulting works often take the form of delicate leaves which hold printed images. These are encased in resin so they can be touched and handled, like fossils.”
The result is a beautiful collection of photographs that juxtapose the fragile intricacies of nature with human physicality. The human imprint on nature is literal in Romero’s work.
Also in the exhibition is moving image artist Edd Carr, co-director of Sustainable Darkroom, an organisation that researches and develops eco-friendly photography alternatives.
Carr “uses these methods to create films that comment on the human relationship to ecological crisis and the mass extinction of life, and the resulting trauma we face as a species.”
Sustainable Darkroom's founder and executive director Hannah Fletcher is also exhibited at the gallery. She brings combinations of organic and waste materials together to create ornate and unexpected structures which she photographs. According to her website, “Fletcher questions the life cycle and value of materials by incorporating waste from her studio and workshops back into the system of making.”
Finally, Scott Hunter brings his practice of experimental photography, scientific processes, and ecological research which “challenges anthropocentrism by creating new representations of the landscape that contest traditional attitudes of landscape photography,” Cargo Collective writes. He focuses on using organic materials to process photographs beyond the traditional toxic methods.
The exhibition is sponsored by Pasqua Wines, an Italian winery making its first international artistic collaboration. “We believe that creativity needs to be cultivated with love and care, just like the land,” said Riccardo Pasqua, CEO of the company. Each of the artists demonstrates what we have always believed to be true - that through experimentation and pushing boundaries we can unlock progress."
‘Metamorphosis: Innovation in Eco Photography & Film’ will run at the Saatchi Gallery until 28 July.
