Plants of the Anthropocene.
I thought about how plants are present for humans in every aspect of our lives, from providing food, shelter, and oxygen, to being the basis of items we use daily. But on a grand level, plants represent our exchanges and migrations, for example through global trade, and plants help chart/document human and geologic timelines. Botanist Anna Atkins made cyanotypes for her publication, “Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions," in 1843 - at the end of the industrial age and before the nuclear and technological ages. Her cyanotype images of algae and seaweed were not thought of as art but a way to catalog plants - a way to create a sense of categorical order and control over the natural world. But this is silly when I consider the chaos humans unleashed on the environment from that period until today. Using the same photographic process of Atkins, my plant prints are representative of our time now, on the cusp of the next great mass extinction initiated by man’s “advances.”