FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY
A LIVING ARCHIVE
Pokeberry Anthotype on Handmade Cotton and Abaca Paper
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Plantistype, (i.e. image printed directly via macerated plant paper)
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Pokeberry Anthotype on Handmade Cotton and Abaca Paper
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Pokeberry Anthotype on Handmade Cotton and Abaca Paper
14” x 11”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Lily of the Valley Anthotype on Handmade Cotton and Abaca Paper
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Pokeberry Anthotype on Handmade Cotton and Abaca Paper
14” x 11”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Pokeberry Anthotype on Handmade Cotton and Abaca Paper
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Plantistype of Phragmites with Mugwort
(i.e. image printed directly via macerated plant paper)
8.5 × 11”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Pokeberry Anthotype on Handmade Cotton and Abaca Paper
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Pokeberry Anthotype on Handmade Cotton and Abaca Paper
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Plantistype, (i.e. image printed directly via macerated plant paper)
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Pokeberry Anthotype on Handmade Cotton and Abaca Paper
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Pokeberry Anthotype on Stonehenge
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Lily of the Valley Anthotype on Handmade Cotton and Abaca Paper
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Pokeberry Anthotype on Handmade Cotton and Abaca Paper
11” x 14”
2022-ongoing
Unique print
Artists May Babcock and Lindsey Beal have innovated a plant-based, handmade photo paper to document post-industrial New England. Their experiments combine handmade papermaking and alternative photographic processes in a rich collaborative series.
A Living Archive currently focuses on the Blackstone River Valley, the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. It was and still is the site of mills, supplying the country with materials and goods, relying on families and children for their labor force, and impacting both nature and people.
This project creates a contemporary archive of the remaining built landscape and marginalized ecologies, through the lens of sustainable processes and materials. Babcock and Beal made photos and gathered plant materials on-site. They then printed imagery on handmade sun-sensitive plant paper. When displayed in exhibition spaces where they are exposed to sunlight, this living work poetically fades, just as this complex history will if it is not named and archived.