LEGACIES OF PHOTOGRAPHIC SILVER

ENTANGLED GEOLOGIES, HISTORIES, AND LIVES

2022 - 2025

As part of a long-term engagement with communities living in the United States, this research examines the lives that are touched by analogue photographic industries.

Silver grounds the magic of analogue photography; it is the essential light-sensitive coating of photographic negatives. Silver exists in specific territories and is mobilised across the globe to enable media culture. We live in a critical time where media culture and pollution are affecting people and places in disproportionate ways.

Working with U.S silver miners, KODAK engineers, conservationists, and Native American peoples, I explore how people relate to silver extraction, and how it entangles with their histories, worlds and lives. I combine photography, sound, ethnography and other kinds of multimodal engagements into an alternative archive of analogue photography's history - one that foregrounds links between settler-colonialism, ecology, and silver.

I research plants living in abandoned silver mines and Kodak-contaminated landscapes.

I mix these plants into low-toxic, plant-based photographic chemistries to develop photographs of landscapes touched by Kodak. I use these to open up dialogues about the material base of film photography, and its chemical and colonial legacy.

Fieldwork is centred in historical silver extraction sites in Nevada, homelands of Northern Paiute, Shoshone and Washoe peoples, and the city of Rochester, homelands of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and site of KODAK's main manufacturing plant in New York.

Silver City residents, Nevada (2022)

Gelatin silver print test strip developed in Willow plant-chemistry. Willow trees draw up mercury from contaminated grounds and store it in their botanical matter. Mining corporations contaminated the nearby Carson River, Toinahukwa (Northern Paiute) Watahshemu (Washoe), with mercury during silver extraction.

Abandoned silver mining structures, Silver City, Nevada.

XP2 35mm film processed in photo-chemistry made from Yellow Rabbitbrush plants. Yellow Rabbitbrush is a plant that helps stabilise environments that have been disturbed by mining.

Pinyon Pines, Silver City, Nevada.

Direct positive pinhole photographs, hand developed in photo-chemistry made from Yellow Rabbitbrush plants. Yellow Rabbitbrush grows in alkaline soils typical of mining sites. Pinyon Pine forests were felled to fuel colonial-settler mining towns.

At its peak, the Eastman Kodak Company was the largest consumer of silver, second only to the U.S Treasury. It processed 13,000kg of silver a week to make photographic film and papers using machinery that ran 24 hours a day.

Part of my research examines the wealth generated by the industry, and its uneven distribution throughout the city of Rochester. I read these wealth disparities in the plants that grow around the city. George Eastman displayed his wealth with Dutch tulips that he imported from the Netherlands to bloom in New York's winter months. Tulips were once more valuable than gold; Eastman 'forced' tulips to bloom in February each year inside his mansion. This tradition continues today at the George Eastman Museum.

Lumen prints [Eastman tulips] on outdated Kodak photographic paper, unfixed

The city of Rochester suffers high crime rates, segregation, and legacies of redlining practices. The situation is complex, and Kodak contamination of neighbourhoods forms part of the story. I was warned by many not to visit certain areas of the city, but I had to bike across these boundaries to reach Kodak's industrial site. I photographed my bike route from green, wealthy areas, to neighbourhoods running north of the city towards Kodak Park. The film was developed using plants I had access to in leafy regions of the city - Maple, Oak and Beech trees.

Bike journey across the city of Rochester, developed in plant photo-chemistry made from East Avenue Oak trees

I continued to look to the ground, foraging for plants growing in Kodak-contaminated spaces like dandelion, mugwort and comfrey. These grow abundantly along the Lower Genesee, a stretch of water contaminated by Kodak and investigated by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for decades. It was polluted with heavy metals including silver, cadmium and mercury.

Dandelion, mugwort and comfrey are heavy metal remediation species. The have the capacity to draw up pollutants from the ground. While it is difficult to assess their role in decontaminating the Lower Genesee, I think about the plants as vehicles for discussing links between photographic empires, pollution, and socio-ecological violences.

Lower Genesee River, Rochester New York

Fuji colour film documenting process of developing film on the Lower Genesee with film photographers. Image credit: research participant

I worked with local film photographers to collect contaminated Genesee river water and mix a plant developer from heavy metal-remediating plants growing along the river (dandelion and mugwort). They were keen to learn plant chemistry and it was a new way to hang out and geek out over photography.

CLEAN PRINTS, DIRTY WATERS

We dug up the weeds that grew at the water’s edge

These are the plants that clean,

decontaminate,

and

remediate.

Mercury washed into the river for a long time

it was decades

It sits along the spines of fish and people eat the fish

Someone said it’s

mostly low income people

And there are no signs about the mercury.

The water was cold and the air was hot

sticky even

We lit a camping stove and heated the foraged leaves

I found a rock for a lid and let the pot boil

We waited in the sun

You skimmed slate on the water

It sparkled extra that day

A muddy green sparkle

I was impatient, staring at the pot

willing it to boil faster

I was nervous to develop the film

We used river water and I'd never tried it before

The film came out black and I was devastated

You said it didn’t matter but it did

I looked to the tank and it was broken

I whipped the film to the sun to inspect it

The light leaks spared eight frames and we celebrated

Their grainy, light-leaked perfection.

Results from collaborative film processing on Kodak-contaminated Genesee River, Rochester New York

XP2 35mm film processed in plant photo-chemistry made from heavy metal remediating 'weeds' growing along the river

From top left to bottom right: Genesee river bank, skimming slates along the water, Genesee plant extractions to make photo-chemistry, photographing mugwort growing along the river.

I spent time volunteering at George Eastman House and Gardens, collecting lawn cuttings to use as developer chemistry. Noticing the gardening cultures of removing weeds and keeping lawns looking 'clean', I thought about links between controlling the aesthetics of gardens in relation to controlling the aesthetics of photographs. There was a right way and a wrong way, and this was a culture.

Tracing the chemicals between garden and photographic worlds reveals the overlap of chlorine-based chemicals. Chlorine-based chemistries came out of World War I chemical warfare research. These found their way into agricultural sectors to be used as pesticides. They also entered photographic industries to be used to manufacture film bases.

I took photographs of George Eastman's philanthropic projects, the Memorial Art Gallery and Eastman School of Music, alongside scenes from Kodak's industrial park, and developed these with Eastman lawn cuttings. This was an exercise in tracing links between Kodak wealth, multispecies violence, and film photography. The photographs printed off-centre, blurry, and in high contrast. This became a refusal to subscribe to the aesthetics of 'cleanliness', that is anything but clean.

Gelatin silver prints, outdated Kodak photographic paper

Developed in plant-based developer chemistry mixed from George Eastman House lawn cuttings

Legacy_The City That Kodak Built VIII.jpg

While the colonial, ecological and social legacies of the Kodak industry and its use of silver are significant, I also wanted the PhD to centre the positivity coming out of Rochester and its communities.

In particular, is the work at Ganondagan White Corn Project, managed by Friends of Ganondagan, and located in Victor, New York. The White Corn Project restores cultivation and consumption of White Corn to Haudenosaunee and wider Native American communities. Working in collaboration with Kalen Fontenelle (Seneca, Heron Clan), this piece was made in neighbouring Rochester New York, home of Kodak.

Tuscarora White Corn

Gelatin silver print on outdated photographic paper, developed with 'waste' chemistry from White Corn processing (White Corn and Lye)

Made in collaboration with Kalen Fontenelle, Seneca (Heron Clan).

For close to a year I had the pleasure of volunteering with the White Corn Project. White Corn would have been cultivated extensively, and with care, on the lands before settler-colonialism and industries like Kodak established itself. Today, the corn is cooked in a solution of lye to soften it and to make it edible (to humans!). I repurposed this solution to create a low-toxic, plant-based photo-chemistry which was used to develop the print.

Rethinking the material base of photography and reusing chemistries that are otherwise wasted, forms a central focus to creating more ecological futures for photography. White Corn is embedded visually, materially, and chemically in this piece, and it aims to foreground the positive futures of Rochester and its communities, while acknowledging Kodak’s toxic and colonial legacy.

With huge thanks to the team at Ganondagan and the White Corn Project.