BioTrace
In 2020, Covid-19 spread across the world with devastating effects. The resulting pandemic has not only led to an unprecedented global health and economic crisis, it has significantly changed the way we live. It is almost incomprehensible that a virus, invisible to the naked eye, can leave its trace in such a significant way.
During lockdown, I started to think about how micro-organisms are all around us and how their activity mostly goes unnoticed. This work is a series of biograms that attempt to visually represent this on-going activity, documenting their presence and making a permanent record of their impact when displaced from their natural environment.
As we emerge from this pandemic, we must consider our role in the destruction of biodiversity that creates the conditions for diseases such as Covid-19 to arise. Rapid urbanisation, population growth and increased demand for natural resources disrupt ecosystems bringing people in closer contact with animal species more than ever before increasing the chance of disease and further pandemics
A piece of film is exposed to a source of bacteria and stored in a dark place for several weeks. The bacteria feed on the film’s silver gelatin emulsion, destabilizing it. As the culture grows, it consumes the gelatin as a food source and liberates the silver particles into abstract patterns. Eventually the bacteria die and no more changes occur. The resulting negative, visibly altered, is scanned and is a permanent record of their presence.
Making a negative is working with an old idea, capturing the world and creating an image from the past. This work is more concerned with revealing the unexplored possibilities that lie within the materiality of photography. Images can take days, weeks and even months to make. As the bacteria subtracts layers from the surface, it is not only recording the presence of life but it is stretching the sense of how time is recorded. This is particularly important in a rapidly changing, digital world.