Prussian Blue

The Prussian Blue series explores the expressive potential of the photographic medium through its most basic elements: light, chemicals, and substrate. By reducing the medium to these three components, the restrictions that photographic representation traditionally carries are eliminated. Without a camera, a negative, or the obligation to represent the material world through a lens, the prints produced explore the essence of the medium and allow the surface of the photograph, usually overlooked, to become the subject of the work.

​

The history of the invention of photography is populated by natural scientists, chemists, and astronomers, whose scientific research required the precision of photographic representation, and therefore served as the catalyst for the invention of photography. Sir John Herschel, the inventor of the cyanotype process, was a true polymath whoconducted research in chemistry, astronomy, and optics, among other fields.

​

The Prussian Blue series takes the cyanotype process as a starting point and uses the chemistry and paper alone to make images without negatives or camera. The images remain photographic due to the process and chemicals used, but differ from more visually familiar forms of photography because they are made without cameras or negatives; using the chemistry itself as an ephemeral ‘negative’ that is destroyed during processing. The images – which draw attention to the surface and nature of the photographic image - allude to the process of investigation, experimentation, and analysis which is a fundamental aspect of both science and photography.