When not delivering workshops or creating artwork and podcasts for my PhD, I also work for Westcountry Rivers Trust as the charity’s communications manager.

In April 2024, I successfully created a Big Give Green Match Fund fundraising campaign to enable the trust to deliver its first ever arts and science project.

This pilot, Westcountry Artivists to Enhance Rivers (WAtER) aims to spark river kinship by sharing river stories through eco-conscious photographic and acoustic activities. The purpose of this aligns with the charity’s mission to bolster public understanding of river eco-systems and the work to be done to keep these healthy for all who depend on them.

The first session ran on 5 October 2024 in St Agnes. It was a great start, with feedback from participants including:

“So lovely to slow down, to listen, look, talk and create so inter-connectedly with water. My whole system feels grounded and peaceful afterwards.”

“Loved it! Josie and Harry were both really knowledgable, passionate and inspiring.”

“Amazing! I’m inspired to start creating art with my class at school.”

Participants were also asked if they would like to support my PhD research, with all consenting to do so.

I’m excited to see how this project can support the charity’s work for freshwater environments but also how the ripples outwards through my PhD and the participants ongoing environmental actions in relation to freshwater are inspired through these ‘abstract’ art methods.

The London Arts-Based Research Centre’s international and transdisciplinary conference Sense & Sensibility: Method Meets Art ran over the weekend of 12 and 13 October.

I presented online twice at the conference. The first was with my eco-acoustic collaborator Dr Harry Ovington and highlighted our research and development ideas around human/non-human wellbeing in blue spaces associated with elements of sensory perception.

The second was my explanation of my PhD research.

Following both presentations, we garnered questions from other attendees and I hope to be able to share a snippet of these in the near future.

Find out more about LABRC.

Life really can throw curve balls. Since I started my PhD in late 2022, family health, bereavement, menopause, and now trying to help organise home care for my 93-year-old mum (who lives hundreds of miles away) to get her out of hospital have all zapped time and energy levels. Family will always come first and I don't begrudge a minute of time spent helping however I can.

It has meant that most of my PhD work is still currently in my head. Plans, literature reviews, other artists, potential experts to interview are whirling around and need some space to land. I'm also having a mild panic that as more and more people are latching on to the health of our rivers and freshwater as a photographic topic, I will discover someone who is also researching the same thing as me. But I'm also told these are normal PhD researcher feelings so in the spirit of my slow photography methodology, I remind myself again that the only competition I have is with challenges I create for myself and taking things steady is not a bad attitude to have.

One of the best outcomes, given all of the recent work and life demands, is my discovery of plant intelligence as an emerging botanical theory.

Thank you to Zoe Schlanger for The Light Eaters - you are on my list of people to contact as you have inspired a new direction that will play a major part of my future research.

In addition, my proposal to the latest London Arts-Based Research Centre transdisciplinary conference for scholars, creatives, and arts-based researchers discussing works that bridge science and art, has been accepted.

I will be taking part online on 12 October and my proposal is below.

Rivercideotypes: the power of plants and eco-conscious, abstract photographic art as mediator between humans and freshwater environments.

Through the embodied creation of ‘Rivercideotypes,’ my presentation will share the possibility for riverine-inspired, eco-conscious abstract and camera-less photography to inspire positive ecological action for freshwater.

Based in the streams of St Agnes on Cornwall’s north coast, my PhD research marries my love for abstract images with my passion for plants through phytoremediation and the emerging topic of plant intelligence.

Highlighting how the human-made challenges to water quality from issues such as historic mining, sewage pollution and chemical/pharmaceutical inputs are wreaking havoc on the UK’s freshwater ecosystems, I am seeking to determine if the power of photography and freshwater plants can influence long-term positive behaviour change towards a resource we cannot live without, while tethering people to their place as and within nature.

Writing in the 1860s Charles Baudelaire described the perfect urban flaneur as a ‘passionate spectator’, describing the ‘immense joy in setting up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite.’

I am stealing this idea of the 19th Century gentleman wanderer to become a ‘riverside flaneuse’, curious about my watery surroundings and immersed in the ebb and flow of oft forgotten streams that speak to our past, present and future.

Using a photographic process from the 1840s, and one that ‘allowed’ a woman to create what is considered the world’s first photographic books, I will bear witness to the botanical lives along the riverbanks, collaborating with them and the water to visualise the unseen story of our freshwater environments as they call for change.

Both the Trevellas and Trevaunance Streams have meandered through the past 20 years of my life.

Before moving to Cornwall, I had never lived anywhere (except in my childhood home) for longer than three years.

My first home in the St Agnes parish was a cottage nestled in the dip of Barkla Shop. It was walking up and downstream through Jericho Valley, along the side of the stream (where possible) that led to Trevellas Porth that I'm sure helped me plant roots. At the time, the valley was less known (pre-Sunday travel supplement features) and I always felt I could still hear the sounds of the past mining works ringing through the surrounding woodland and down to Blue Hills where the valley floor runs to the sea.

Then there is the story of the King Dog, buried in the valley at the end of the 60s and the mysterious sect that had revered him. You can do your own research on that one.

Moving to the village a few years later, my walks down to Trevaunance Cove would often include strolling through Peterville Woods and down Stippy Stappy, past the stream on its way to the beach. Heading inland would take me along Water Lane, losing upsteam elements to private land.

Much of the waterways through the village have been changed, running under roads and through culverts.

Both streams fed onto the shoreline of another beach rated excellent for water quality at Trevaunance Cove.

The Environment Agency acknowledges that the St Agnes stream catchment can be impacted by urban drainage as it flows through and under St Agnes.

According to its Bathing Water Profile for Trevaunance Cove, the stream has been monitored since 1986, with quality temporarily worse during and after heavy rainfall (which is to be expected due to pollution/run-off picked up and travelling downstream), and on occasion after dry spells.

In the past, untreated effluent was discharged off Trevaunance Point. In 1996, a Chemically Assisted Sedimentation sewage treatment scheme was installed. According to the EA information, this included a new relocated outfall, some re-sewerage and improvements to combined sewer overflows.

In 2004, this was upgraded with ultraviolet (UV) disinfection and an advanced membrane filtration process, while in 2011 storm overflow event duration monitoring (EDM) was installed at the sewage water treatment works (STW) and also at the Peterville and Cove pumping stations.

The outfall from St Agnes STW is discharged following disinfection to the sea 640m west of bathing water.

Most of England's sewers are 'combined', meaning they carry foul sewage (e.g., our poop) and surface water form roads, roofs and drains. There is an emergency/storm overflow from the Cove pumping station, discharging into Trevaunance Stream 70m from the beach, and at the Peterville pumping station that discharges to the stream 750m from the beach.

These are only meant to be used in exceptional circumstance to avoid sewage backing up in homes.

Misconnections from domestic / business premises to the wrong sysytem i.e, into the to the surface channel rather than the foul sewage channel can add to the pressure.

if you want to learn more about the potential pollution sources that can harm rivers, lakes, groundwater, coasts and more, check out The Watershed Pollution Map.

As part of getting to know the lives of these streams, I will be conducting water quality tests (phosphate, turbidity, temperature, visual including plant ID) using citizen science test kit from Westcountry Rivers Trust. This is so I can acknowledge their health at the time of creating artwork with their water and plants.

The images below give a glimpse into both streams. I will continue to record the areas where I wander as a mapping record.

I aim to conduct this work during the next Phd academic year, with a view to create further opportunity for viewer feedback at the end of this time.

I hope you will join me in my rural riverside 'flaneuse-ship'.

The three streams I will concentrate on for my research run down to Trevellas Porth, Trevaunance Cove and Chapel Porth.

Having walked their banks for many years, I have developed a bond with each. But I need to go deeper into their stories - I have yet to really scratch the surface of their past, and how each has individually been influenced by the human hand.

Only being able to reach parts of them by public footpaths, I will have to seek landowner permission if I want to access and map them from source to sea. Of course, the route of respectful trespass is always a consideration, especially as in my post from 4 July I spoke of being the rural equivalent of a flaneur, or flaneuse.

Apologies for doctoring the French language but perhaps a ‘méandreuse’, one who wanders the edge-lands of these streams to uncover the life along them and the power of plants to change minds is even more fitting as a research methodology is rooted in the practice of slow photography.

The images below show glimpses of my walk from St Agnes down to Chapel Porth, taking the route along the Chapel Coombe stream.

The catchment is in a former mining valley; there are several disused tin and copper mines nearby, while surrounding land is mainly agricultural. The catchment sits within national and international designations including, the Cornwall National Landscape, the Godrevy Head to St Agnes Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Special Area of Conservation (SAC), and the St Agnes Heritage Coast.

The stream runs into a monitored Bathing Water Quality beach at Chapel Porth, which since 2019 has been rated excellent.

This does not mean the stream and water quality is not under potential threats from run-off.

On my walk today, low flow was noticeable and the usual tinkling of the stream was absent for the early section.

I'm not alone in thinking there has been less wildlife sighted this summer in the UK, although a glimpse of possible dragon/damsel fly as I reached the lush valley floor was good to note.

Disquiet: an unease; feelings of worry and unhappiness about something.

This is a word I used in my presentation at Falmouth University's F-2-F event to explain how I am feeling in relation to my love for the environment and photography when one is an extractor and one the extracted.

It is interesting to me to note that this year's curator of the Louis Roederer Foundation Discovery Award Audrey Illouz has pinpointed the word disquiet in relation to the artist selection.

Illouz cites use of the word as a means to represent the work of those selected and the "notions of disquiet".

In the article by BJP's Diane Smyth, Smyth states the term has been popularised in France by Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet - not having heard of this, I'm intrigued to look it up.

But it is the sharing of a sentence from Illouz's introductory text which explains the word as a “heightened, vibratory sense of consciousness, perhaps more so than its many imperfect synonyms (malaise, anguish, anxiety)”, that made me notice a synergy between my use of disquiet and Illouz's use.

It is learning of selected artist Coline Jourdan’s Raising the Dust series that piques my curiosity. No images are shown in the article, but it explains the work about a small town in southern France is about traces of pollution there due to former gold and arsenic mining. Illouz's asks:
“Pollution is a concrete reality but it is invisible, so how do you show it in photographs?
"It is ungraspable, unless you start looking at the marks, the very subtle traces in the landscape.”

The feature goes on to say that along with documentary images, Jourdan creates more experimental work by washing prints in polluted river water, creating "abstract but also material, physical evidence of environmental damage".

I'm keen to learn more about what those viewing this particular work felt about it, and I'll try to connect to the artist as it aligns with my research.

This has come about through a word I noticed, simply as it is one I used to describe the sense of the unsettling that pervades my own practice and research.

Read the article here.

Below is a link to my presentation notes used to inform students, staff and visitors joining the PhD student presentations as a part of this year's face-to-face event at the Institute of Photography (IoP) at Falmouth University.

Talking openly to people I do not know about my research, particularly at a time when I am addressing some challenges within it, has been a huge help and has certainly helped me feel more confident in speaking out about my research.

Having worked as a photographer, journalist, podcast host, and communications manager, it is second nature to me to tell the stories of others.

However, as someone who is quite private and insular by nature, it is always harder to speak about my own work and ideas. Perhaps there's plenty to unpick about why that may be, maybe like many others I hold a deep-rooted fear of ridicule or failure.

Mind you, I'm now approaching that age when I shall 'wear purple' and being unapologetic for who I am is certainly something I'm embracing more and more as I go through my PhD.

Presentation Notes 4 July 2024 F-2-F

Catching up with my PhD Supervisors Wendy McMurdo and Daro Montag has been so rewarding today. For some time I have been mulling over the feeling that I have lost myself in my PhD. I don’t mean in an absorbed fashion but in that ‘I’ have vanished from my research. We spoke about how important it is for me to remedy this.

In the early days of my PhD, I had written my five-year-plan very much with methods and outcomes that would suit my employers as there had been some leaning towards supporting my studies. Things have evolved since then, and although my day job can influence and be useful to my studies, I have decided to remove my request to my employers to support me through time allocation to free me of any obligations.

This decision is very freeing. And the conversation with my supervisors has helped my acknowledge that I need to put my tendency to support and please others while devising my PhD plans to one side and focus on putting myself at the forefront of future research.

I will be reviewing my original five-year-plan to clarify the direction I will now take.

This will include foregrounding my interest in phytoremediation and returning to ethnobotany and autobotanical methodologies, and a slow photography mindset.

I am honoured to have been invited by Talking Rivers to take part in their Confluence Weaving Rivers Water Guardians project.

This is an opportunity to share my river-related artwork in a “Tapestry of solidarity that brings together the voice of water guardians from around the world.”

This will hopefully lead to a potential collaboration in some other form in future.

I also hope to have conversations with Simon Taylor, Scott Hunter, and Maverick Aesthetics regarding their varied and fascinating practices and artwork.

More soon on that.

In October 2023, I applied to a call out for curators from the Fringe Arts Bath.

This sought people to bring together artists as an element of the two-week arts festival taking place in Bath, UK.

My proposal was as follows:

Bath is inextricably linked to water. Humans are inextricably linked to water. The Waters of Sulis and Beyond will examine the connections people have with the freshwater habitats where they live through abstract eco-conscious photographic image-making.

The city of Bath derives its name from its hot springs - the only hot springs in the UK. They are known for their health giving benefits, with word Spa relating to the Latin phrase ‘Salus Per Aquam’ or ‘health through water’. But our rivers are facing unprecedented health challenges, with none of England’s rivers free from chemical contamination. When water is ‘on tap’, the participating artists have been asked to share what water means to them by responding not with a direct perception but an alternative, abstract view. Work is made with the full collaboration of the riverine close to where the participating artists live. It aims to raise the profile of historic and social impacts humans have had on something we simply cannot live without, while offering mediation between people and freshwater.

After being selected as a curator, my original aim had been to produce an in-situ exhibition, but personal family health issues meant I could not commit to spending two full weeks away from home.

In agreement with the festival organisers, I pivoted the plan to the production of a limited edition photo zine to be promoted during the festival at venues and a one-day workshop and talk.

With more than 30 applicants, I selected 14 artists to participate, choosing one image each that I felt responded to the theme of what freshwater meant to them.

My curatorial output was also supported by Dr Harry Ovington who I was introduced to via a contact at Bath Spa University. Harry is a composer and eco-sound artist. For him, this provided an opportunity to showcase his work on recording the sounds of pollution within our rivers. For me, that was an exciting addition to the visual contributions to The Waters of Sulis & Beyond.

To promote the zine, the events and the artists involved, I scheduled regular social media posts on my platforms, tagging collaborators and others as appropriate.

On Saturday 1 June, I ran a riverside cyanotype workshop at Newark Works, one of the festival venues, plus an artists’ talk in the late afternoon.

Although nine people came along to the workshop, the talk only attracted seven attendees, with three being artists involved.

This was disappointing as it limited potential feedback opportunity in relation to my PhD research. However, most of the artists involved are keen to support me in this and I will promote the opportunity to respond to the online zine via other channels in the coming weeks, including a presentation at an upcoming face-to-face event for photography students at Falmouth University.

To view the zine, please visit fab-2024

In April 2024, as a part of my role with the environmental charity Westcountry Rivers Trust, I developed and ran a successful fundraising campaign through The Big Give. This call-out for public donations to be matched by The Big Give secured just over the £5,000 target and will now enable me to devise plans and activities for an arts and science project, Westcountry Artivists to Enhance Rivers (WAtER). This scheme will engage participants in the riverine creation of eco-conscious abstract photography, with the purpose of sharing river-related science stories while nurturing river kinship. Ultimately, the project will combine citizen science with artistic interpretation to bolster behaviour change and/or public understanding of freshwater ecosystems.

Although my AfR (see And We’re Off - 2 April 2023) still holds true on the most part, knowing that my practice-based PhD can evolve and pivot provides a much-needed creative aspect to arts-related research.

Now, I am focusing in on phytoremediation and chemical (inc. mining) impacts on freshwater as the science-based touchstone, but it is good to come back to this original AfR to anchor to and push away from.

Phytoremediation is fascinating to me as a very amateur botanist (and I really do mean amateur). It is a nature-based means of cleaning up pollution in air, soil and water through living plants. I will shortly share a much more detailed article on this.

Cyanotype remains a process I will use to create my artworks, but I have been turning the idea of Cyanotype, with its link to being washed out in oceans and seas by many practitioners - Meghann Reipenhoff being very well known for this - as the most useful to mirror our human use of chemicals and how they can effect freshwater.

Yet, I am open to other photo techniques and light sensitive image-making as my PhD evolves - it is still early days in this practical element of my work and I don’t want to be too restrictive just yet.

For the past few weeks, I have been concentrating on my curation for Fringe Arts Bath. In doing so, I have started to feel as though I’m not concentrating on my PhD but I’m getting better at not compartmentalising my life and truly understanding that my life is my practice-based PhD.

In part this is due to thoughts around how we are so dependent on freshwater to survive; we’ve yet to discover a planet in our universe that supports life as we know it. This has me pondering if the practice aspect of my research relates to my being around 60-70% water. Am I the living, breathing vessel through which abstract photography and phytoremediation can mediate for river health.

Just this week, water supply in the Brixham area of Devon has been contaminated by the parasite cryptosporidium, leading to more than 45 people so far confirmed with cryptosporidiosis and over 100 cases reported. At first South West Water refuted any links, but on 17 May 2024 the BBC reported the the water company is draining the Hillhead reservoir as a faulty valve in a field of cattle had been identified as a possible entry source for the infection. Now, these things happen - rarely - but it highlights how fragile our dependency on current infrastructure and suppliers is.

Given the political landscape (in an election year) around river health and the growing interest in this, plus customer dissatisfaction with privatised water firms in England, this incident is another example of how vital it is our society demands change to secure a sustainable, healthy and thriving river system for all who depend on it.

Situations such as this also focus my mind on my production of abstract photography. For example, when I began fully using cyanotype more than 12 years, it was deemed okay to rinse the solution out in the ocean and the sea. But, since then, and my workshops have had a small part in this, the interest in the cyanotype process has boomed. In addition, the number of people ‘collaborating’ with rivers and the sea to create cyanotypes has grown.

And, although in principle, the quantity of the iron salts being washed out into rolling waves or a fast running river are negligible, there is always the niggling thought of the cumulative effect and chemical mixtures combining to cause detriment to our already struggling waterways.

Research so far and over a number of years still points to how little impact cyanotype solution (I refer to the classic formula of potassium ferricyanide and ammonium ferric citrate) will have on life in fast flowing water, yet I still feel some discomfort around adding anymore ‘shit’ to freshwater and on to the sea - either in-situ or down the drain.

One of the artists chosen to take part in The Waters of Sulis & Beyond who also works with river spaces put a call out on a cyanotype group asking for advice. Many people pointed them to chemist Dr Mike Ware’s Cyanmicon - a great starting point for us all in relation to the traditional and his ‘faster’ process.

I will be focusing on the chemical aspects of creation as part of my practice - to clearly explain the potential impact, or lack of, to others.

The current title for my PhD Is: Rivercideotypes - an exploration into phytoremediation and abstract photographic art as a mediator between river health and human need.

But what does Rivercideotypes mean? It’s a term I’ve created (well, I’ve not seen it elsewhere) inspired by the documentary ‘Rivercide’ directed by Franny Armstrong and presented by George Monbiot in 2021, with cide a Latin suffix that means killing. It seems apt in the context of what humans do to rivers. The ‘otype’ simply refers to the photographic processes that may be used in the practical aspects of abstract art creation: cyan-otype; anth-otype.

We know words have power. And, apparently, a photo is worth a thousand words. Rivercideotypes will give the power back to the river through photography.

Within my photographic practice, I battle constantly with my desire to make work that tells intriguing stories about environmental matters and my use of a creative medium embroiled in extractive practices, historically and currently. I’m grappling with the idea that photography, which, to exist, has to ‘take’ from nature - and therefore aligned to a human-centric less than circular way of living (think fast fashion; plastic production; throwaway culture etc.) can inspire change and healthier river environments. As phytoremediation represents the ability of plants to cleanse pollutants from the environment, can photo-remediation cleanse pollutants from our freshwater environments?

Just yet, I’m not clear on how eco-conscious, abstract photo-art, made with the ‘collaboration’ of rivers, will ‘look’ to really make humans see freshwater differently in a country where, for the time being, it is still on tap. I need to chew on this for a while longer.

There has always been talk about the death of photography throughout its history. As one invention gave way to another, the past and the future collided, often sending shockwaves through photo communities devoted to the before, before they have even grasped the after. That’s happening now with AI and the for and against divide.

In my lifetime, fashions seem to come in cycles and as digital technology has progressed through photography, the past few years in particular have witnessed a boom among artists wanting to use more sustainable photographic options to make work.

I have seen this since founding ShutterPod in 2012, and my podcast, Photopcene, in 2021. The later now has 40 conversations with photographers and artists making conscious efforts to minimise their photographic footprint.

Speaking with others on the podcast, there is a strong draw to working with, and for, nature and in outdoor spaces. It isn’t the domain of younger generations often considered to be more attuned with environmental issues either. We have gone from a few to a worldwide community practising this way. There may be slightly more women than men in this ‘new’ eco-conscious photography arena, perhaps there is a subconscious link to Anna Atkins’ time when botany was considered a suitable science for women. It will be an interesting part my research to determine what drives photo-artists to work this way.

I began my photographic life back in 1985, learning in traditional darkrooms where you never forget their chemical smell. Regardless of the magic you can find there as an image materialises from sleep, I was never comfortable surrounded by toxic liquids. I was an early user of digital when working as a medical photographer - it certainly changed the game for various sectors, but I never felt the moment of magic on a screen as in a developing tray. That’s why predominantly using camera-less, low to non-toxic processes where I can create work in a ‘sunroom’ rather than a darkroom has called to me the most. Working outside along the shoreline, at the allotment or in the riverine is where I connect most to image-making.

This circles back to my PhD title - if my research can mediate for river health then it will, perhaps, provide validation for my choice to use these photographic methods as a tool to call for human-environment behaviour change. With so many artists turning to ‘nature-based’ processes to make abstract photo artwork, the research will show it is more than a means to make ourselves feel better about loving an art form with a dubious environmental footprint.

This feels like a new beginning. I have relocated ShutterPod and Photopocene from my spare room to a great space at Mount Pleasant Eco Park, Porthtowan. Simply having storage for my photography workshop bits and bobs is a game changer - and I can run workshops on-site too!

Not only is it good for my practice, it’s also good for my PhD too.

Head over to the Photo Store section to book workshops or buy gift vouchers and check out the Events page for other activities coming up in 2024.

Although I began my part-time PhD in October 2022, due to challenging personal circumstances in 2023 my ability to dedicate thinking space to my studies was hindered.

To acknowledge this, my contribution to the 2023 summer symposium related to how I aim to use mindful and slow photography as a methodology within my research. Slowing down and ridding myself of any guilt about not necessarily meeting others expectations is a part of this. It has also meant a total review of what I can accomplish, given I am also working and running my photographic practice.

One way I have done this is to start seeing my PhD not as a separate entity but as my photographic practice. This has meant some soul searching about where my focus needs to be as an artist and also as a PhD candidate. As my employers have provided some support to my studies, I found I was putting their needs first - but they are not funding my time and so I have realised I am not encumbered to create a project solely aligned to benefit them. I also remind myself that I am part-time; so in effect I am only just over half-way through a first year - this certainly helps keep things in perspective.

As with many practice-based PhDs, my research, although fundamentally the same as my initial proposal, is flexing as I find new routes and discoveries. I relate this to the meanderings of a river, the subject on which my work is built.

My current focus is as follows:

Phytoremediation as a simile for photo-re/mediation: the power of plants to remove toxins from nature is like the power of abstract, eco-photography to ‘remove’ toxic human impacts on the riverine.

Speaking with scientists researching phytoremediation as a nature-based solution and comparing this to using photo-re/mediation as part of nature-based solutions.

Curating an artists call-out for an abstract, eco-photo-art element of Fringe Arts Bath which will be part of my participatory reserach into the use of abstarct images to evoke behaviour change and mediate for river health.

Devising a participatory, eco-photography symposium in collabortion with Falmouth University.

Building connections with fellow students following similar areas of study and external academics with subject synergy.

And of course, trying to write up my on-going lit review too. I did make a start on my final thesis too!

The Rivercide - death, water and cyanotypes paper is the one I shared at my first symposium in June 2023.

It was written not long after my friend and father-in-law had died. This influenced my thinking about my PhD in ways I had not expected. The main way has been to slow own, not to rush headlong into being productive but to consider my PhD space, to reflect on what I’m doing not others, and to give myself time to find my own way with research, while still embracing the input, advice and support offered by others.

This reflects for me how we have to wade through grief.

Below is a copy of my signed-off AfR.

It is my touchstone, my place to come back to yet to spark this PhD journey. I’m excited and nervous - let’s see where it goes.

Subject Area:

Eco-orientated, abstract photographic processes; historic mining impacts on Cornwall’s rivers; environmental arts and science.

Research Question: How can abstract cyanotypes function as a mediator between humans and river health in Cornwall?

Aims:

• To implement abstract eco-photography as a mediator between humans and river health.

• To interrogate the ecological footprint of photography while using it as a tool to address human-made ecological river issues.

• To bring scientific, academic, public, arts and photo industry knowledge together for water resource discourse in Cornwall.

Through my photographic practice and work with environmental charity the Westcountry Rivers Trust, I am aware of a gap in knowledge relating to abstract photographic art and the storytelling of complex human-made river health impacts.

Abstract art has been seen as less easy to understand than representative art, as Purgar states “…for many people, images of abstract art still mean “nothing”” (2021), while communicating environmental hyperobjects (Morton, 2013) can be a challenge, particularly in an age of solastalgia (Albrecht, 2007).

With historic mining pollution in Cornwall’s estuaries and rivers (EA., 2023) as a touchstone, my research will consider how abstract eco-conscious photography can inform understanding of the future human relationship to water resources and the riverine.

Employing the camera-less Cyanotype process, the research will explore how an artistic medium bound up in the extractive industries is used to share stories about the effect chemicals from legacy mining still have on freshwater habitats in Cornwall. ‘Citizen artists’ will act as mediators between art, science, and the tough decisions we must make as a society for our future freshwater resources and cultural wellbeing.

Objectives:

• To devise a ‘citizen artist’ project/activity to provide a long-term research platform for abstract photography in the river-health field, adding fresh perspectives to knowledge from people not embedded in the arts or science sectors.

• To produce a visual representation via abstract photography of the life and health of the river/s to mediate between the chemical impact our past, present, and future activities may have on rivers.

• To engage people in the viewing/making of images for a touring exhibition and research their response to the artwork and subsequent relationship with riverine spaces via long-term qualitative survey and participatory research.

• To produce an impact assessment of photographic production on location and habitats.

Research context:

With only 14% of England’s rivers considered in good ecological health, and none having good chemical status (The Rivers Trust: State of our Rivers, 2021) my work will use the Cyanotype as a litmus test for the research question.

While artists such as Andreas Müller-Pohle, who used water quality testing results and a river’s ‘eye’ view in his 2005-6 The Danube Project, to create a new voice for the river (see Figure 1), and Yan Wang Preston for Mother River spent four years from 2010 to 2014 mapping life along the 6,211km of the Yangtze River (Chang Jiang) at 100km intervals with a large format camera to challenge expected depictions of it (Preston, 2017) (see Figure 2), both used a representative style from their singular perspective.

Photographers have always experimented and pushed the boundaries of the medium, from Alvin Langdon Coburn’s non-objective Vortographs to Lyle Rexer’s Edge of Vision: The Rise in Abstraction in Photographyspeaking directly to this.

Since starting my eco-conscious photographic practice in 2012, I have chosen to highlight various environment-related topics through abstract images such as my Harena Now series (see Figure 3) relating to the global sand crisis.

In the past few years, I have witnessed many other photographic practitioners keen to work in more eco-conscious and abstract photographic ways. I also implement my experimental, nature-based approach when delivering photographic workshops via my eco-darkroom, ShutterPod, often using the Cyanotype as an accessible yet artistic technique with a range of audiences.

Historically, the Cyanotype found its niche in engineering and architecture as the original blueprint. Moving away from this defined and instructional purpose, by using the process in a more fluid manner, the research will encourage the discovery of new artistic outcomes while absorbing the creators of the work within the riverine.

Locally, The Red River: Listening to a Polluted River (which has been supported by Westcountry Rivers Trust) is highlighting how creative writing (predominantly) can transform human relationships with one of Cornwall’s most anthropogenically challenged waterways.

But Cornwall also needs to address ongoing problems with its mining legacy. If no action is taken, pollution from disused mines could continue for hundreds more years (Rainbow, 2020). Levin, Ruelfs and Beyerle (2022) pointed a spotlight on photography’s extractive mining legacy and this PhD will seek a balance through camera-less and nature-based processes to visualise river histories and future solutions in new ways.

Methodology

For Anthony Schrag, practice research is the nuanced combination of practice-led and practice-based research (2019), and this will form my primary research methodology.

I am not seeking to provide factual answers to the PhD question but through experimental and experiential means, including photographic experiments in/with the river, and observational and qualitative responses to artwork created by me or the participants, will develop new opportunities for creative and scientific understanding.

This way of working is essential as a making and engagement style to answer my PhD question and will be logged through a reflexive and reflective journal, the development of artworks, events, and/or actions.

Ideas may be circular and as Sullivan states “knowledge is most informative and practical when it is fluid and takes on the shape needed and that to arrive at this liquid state requires research that begins with solid yet unstable ideas” (2010: 13).

Theories such as Attention Restoration Theory (ART), posited by psychologist Stephen Kaplan to explain how nature can renew our focus due to our inherent need to view natural forms and Grounded Theory will be considered as a flexible framework for qualitative elements.

Prediction of final thesis

The final thesis will be a culmination of ‘testbed’ exhibitions as a photographic outlet promoting abstract eco-conscious photographic techniques as a tool to share river-related issues and solutions.

Research Proposal Word Count

992

6. Indicative bibliography

Cited

Albrecht, Glenn, Sartore G M, Connor L, Higginbotham N, Freeman S, Kelly B, Stain H, Tonna A, and Pollard G. 2007. ‘Solastalgia: the distress caused by environmental change.’ Australasian psychiatry: bulletin of Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. Available at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18027145/ [accessed 19 Feb 2023].

EA (Environment Agency). 2023. ‘Cleaning Up Rivers Polluted by Abandoned Metal Mines.’ EA blog [online], Feb 23. Available at: https://environmentagency.blog.gov.uk/2023/02/07/cleaning-up-rivers-polluted-by-abandoned-metal-mines/ [accessed 14 February 2023].

KAPLAN, Stephen. 1995. ‘The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework.’ Journal of Environmental Psychology. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0272494495900012 [accessed 10 December 2022].

LEVIN Boaz, Ruelfs E, Beyerle T. 2022. ‘Mining Photography: The Ecological Footprint of Image Production.’Germany. Spector Books.

MORTON, Timothy. 2013. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. USA. University Of Minnesota Press.

PRESTON, Yan Wang. 2018. ‘Yangtze The Mother River - Photography, Myth and Deep Mapping.’ PEARL Plymouth University. Available at: https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10026.1/12225/2018preston10313159phd.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y [accessed 10 December 2022].

RAINBOW, Philip S. 2020. ‘Mining-contaminated estuaries of Cornwall – field research laboratories for trace metal ecotoxicology.’ Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom. Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-the-marine-biological-association-of-the-united-kingdom/article/miningcontaminated-estuaries-of-cornwall-field-research-laboratories-for-trace-metal-ecotoxicology/FD72610257F6752F60E19840CA44530E [accessed 19 Feb 2023].

RIVERS TRUST. 2021. ‘State of our Rivers.’ River Trust blog [online], 2021. Available at: https://theriverstrust.org/key-issues/state-of-our-rivers [accessed 18 Feb 2023].

SCHRAG, Anthony. 2019. ‘What is Practice Research and Why is it Important to Anyone Other than Artists’ [online]. Available at: https://www.qmu.ac.uk/campus-life/blogs/staff-dr-anthony-schrag/what-is-practice-research-and-why-is-it-important-to-anyone-other-than-artists/ [accessed 18 Feb 2023].

SULLIVAN, G. 2009. Art Practice as Research: Inquiry in Visual Arts. 2nd Edn. Sage Publications.

Additional, non-cited literature

COSTELLO, Diarmuid. 2018. ‘What Is Abstraction in Photography?’ British Journal of Aesthetics. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/bjaesthetics/article-abstract/58/4/385/5129096 [accessed 9 January 2022].

EA (Environment Agency). 2023. State of the Environment: the coastal and marine environment. London: Stationery Office.

JAMES, Christopher. 2015. The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes. 3rd Ed. USA: Cengage Learning. Available at: https://www.christopherjames-studio.com/docs/chapter7-the-cyanotype-process.pdf[accessed 18 Feb 2023].

SCOTT, Conohar. 2014. The​Photographer​as Environmental Activist: Politics, Ethics & Beauty in the Struggle for Environmental Remediation. PhD Thesis. Loughborough University.

SCOTT, Conohar. 2022. Photography and Environmental Activism: Visualising the Struggle Against Industrial Pollution. UK: Routledge.

I knew my AfR wasn’t right. Not that the feedback on my first application has been awful, it just that it made me realise I’d written it more for my employer’s needs than my own.

So, I’m now resubmitting it but with a pretty different slant. It’s still related to rivers but it goes back to my love of cyanotype and camera-less processes. It focuses on art practice as research and puts me in a more central position as the creator of work.

Writing and researching for a PhD is so far out of my comfort zone. But I love a challenge so let’s see how this version lands.

More literature to be reviewed and need to think of ethic’s application too.

Having handed in my AfR, I’m now thinking about a literature review.

I’ll come to ethics soon but the gist of a literature review is to situate my research in the context of what has gone before, to show an understanding of the subject area I am working in, provide arguments against or in support of other theories, comments and viewpoints, and to make the case for my original contribution to knowledge.

It seems it could be easy to fall down a rabbit hole of research and go off on myriad tangents, so I’m breaking my research up as follows.

PhD Question

How can abstract, eco-conscious photographic art influence the human connection to the riverine and freshwater as a vital resource (in the Westcountry)?

Literature related to:

History of abstract photography.

History of environmental photography.

History of eco-conscious photography.

Psychology of Aesthetics - responding to non-figurative images.

The ‘Blue Gym’ - access to rivers.

Freshwater environmental issues - public understanding of pressures on freshwater as a resource.

Arts and science - citizen science/citizen art.

These are the headline topics and will no doubt morph over time, but it’s a means to bring some structure to my initial research.

Some books, articles etc. to date:

ALBRECHT Glenn, Sartore GM, Connor L, Higginbotham N, Freeman S, Kelly B, Stain H, Tonna A, Pollard G. 2007. ‘Solastalgia: the distress caused by environmental change’. Australas Psychiatry. Available at: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18027145/ [accessed 22Jan 2023].

COSTELLO, Diarmuid. 2018. ‘What Is Abstraction in Photography?’. British Journal of Aesthetics. Available at: https://academic.oup.com/bjaesthetics/article-abstract/58/4/385/5129096 [accessed 9 January 2022].

ELKINS, James. 2017. ‘Why Science and Art Needs Not to Make Sense’. Available at: https://brooklynrail.org/2017/12/criticspage/Why-Sci-Art-Needs-Not-to-Make-Sense [accessed 10 December 2022].

GRELLIER James, White M P, Albin M, Bell S, Elliott L R, Gascón M, Gualdi S, Mancini L, Nieuwenhuijsen M J, Sarigiannis D A, Van den Bosch M, Wolf T, Wuijts S, Fleming LE. 2017. ‘BlueHealth: a study programme protocol for mapping and quantifying the potential benefits to public health and well-being from Europe's blue spaces’. BMJ Open. Available at: https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/6/e016188 [accessed 10 December 2022].

KAGAN, Sacha. 2014. ‘The practice of ecological art’. Research Gate. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Sacha-Kagan/publication/274719395_The_practice_of_ecological_art/links/5528114c0cf29b22c9baa473/The- practice-of-ecological-art.pdf [accessed 9 January 2023].

KAPLAN, Stephen. 1995. ‘The restorative benefits of nature: Toward an integrative framework’. Journal of Environmental Psychology. Available at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0272494495900012 [accessed 10 December 2022].

LEGER, Marc James. 2021. Vanguardia. Socially engaged art and theory. UK. Manchester University Press. MORTON, Timothy. 2013. Hyperobjects. Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. USA. University Of Minnesota Press.

Morton, Timothy. All Art is Ecological.

Morton, Timothy. Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World.

PRESTON, Yan Wang. 2018. ‘Yangtze The Mother River - Photography, Myth and Deep Mapping’. PEARL Plymouth University. Available at: https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/10026.1/12225/2018preston10313159phd.pdf?sequence=1&is Allowed=y [accessed 10 December 2022].

SCOTT, Conohar. 2014. The Photographer as Environmental Activist: Politics, Ethics & Beauty in the Struggle for Environmental Remediation. PhD Thesis. Loughborough University.

SCOTT, Conohar. 2022. Photography and Environmental Activism: Visualising the Struggle Against Industrial Pollution. UK. Routledge.

TRAFF, Thea. 2013. ‘The Edge of Vision: Revisited’. The New Yorker. Available at: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/photo-booth/the-edge-of-vision-revisited [accessed 10 December 2022].

TURNER II B L, Meyfroidt P, Kuemmerle T, Müller D and Chowdhury R R. 2020. ‘Framing the search for a theory of land use’. Journal of Land Use Science. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1747423X.2020.1811792 [accessed 9 Jan 2023].

VISSERS, Nathalie and Johan WAGEMANS. 2021. ‘Beyond the single picture: Aesthetic experiences with photography series in an exhibition context’. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. Available at: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Faca0000417 [accessed 10 December 2022].

This is my attempt to journal my PhD experiences. I’m not 100% sure exactly what I’m supposed to be writing here, other than my reflections on progress and research, which I hope to call upon when seeking to write papers, a thesis etc.

I’ll probably note the literature I’m currently taken with and jot down ideas as they occur. One thing is for sure, writing here means I won’t create a tower of notebooks as, although I love beautiful stationery, the clutter of a pile of paperwork just doesn’t work for me.

So, first things first as I’m a tad late to this PhD journal party, what’s happened so far? My AfR is in. This I have struggled with. In part, this is due to my employer’s currently supporting me with a time commitment to my research during my working week. In turn, this creates an expectation of some benefit to the organisation, which does impact how I may approach my research question.

And what is my research question? It is: how can abstract and ecologically-conscious photographic art influence the human relationship to the riverine and freshwater as a vital resource (in the Westcountry)?

My photographic practice has focussed on environmental issues such as plastics, recycling, the global sand crisis, and land access rights. My work tends to be non-figurative, shying away from the constraints representation may place on our reactions to what is seen. But I don’t know what impact my creations have had or may have on the viewer’s understanding of the issues highlighted, nor if the work prompted any change of mind or positive environmental action.

This PhD is personal for this reason, but also in light of the growing interest in images create with and within nature, a return to the historic and analogue processes that I have seen since starting my eco-darkroom in 2012.

My current literature companion is The Iconography of Abstraction: Non-Figurative Images and the Modern World edited by Kresimir Purgar.