Darkroom Garden - Sustainable Photography Practices.

Darkroom Garden Teaches Students About Sustainable Photography Practices (2023) documents an experimental photography project at the University of Cape Town's Michaelis School of Fine Art in South Africa. Established in August 2021 under the guidance of photography lecturers Svea Josephy and Vanessa Cowling, the Sustainable Darkroom Garden was developed with students to investigate ways of reducing the environmental impact associated with analogue photographic practice. Students created a garden in the Rosedale parking area at Michaelis, initially planting spekboom and subsequently expanding it with spinach, beetroot, flowers, mulberry, blueberry and other plants. Rather than functioning simply as a conventional garden, the site became an extension of the photographic darkroom. Plant material grown there has been used to make anthotypes, a camera less photographic process in which pigments extracted from plants are used to produce light sensitive images, while students have also investigated plant based alternatives to conventional photographic chemistry and methods of reducing waste associated with photographic processing.

The project places the materials and chemistry of photography at the centre of photographic education. Traditional analogue processes depend upon manufactured films, papers, developers, fixers, water and other resources, creating questions about chemical disposal, water consumption and the environmental cost of photographic production. The Sustainable Darkroom Garden encourages students to examine these issues practically by growing materials, making photographs and testing alternative processes rather than treating sustainability as separate from photographic practice. The project has involved undergraduate and postgraduate students and has also contributed to wider research into environmentally responsible photographic methods undertaken by Josephy and Cowling. Produced by the University of Cape Town in 2023, the film provides a concise record of an educational experiment in which the garden, photographic laboratory and classroom are brought together to investigate how analogue photography can continue to develop while reducing its dependence on environmentally damaging materials and processes.

University of Cape Town

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Darkroom Garden Teaches Students About Sustainable Photography Practices (2023).
Produced by the University of Cape Town.
Videography: Carbon Visuals and supplied material.
Video editing: Ruairi Abrahams.
Source: University of Cape Town.
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0).

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