Animisms is a series of diptychs with two distinct portraits. The first is how I see the plant in that moment, using flash, choosing the framing, often very much in control of the final image. In the second photograph, through long exposures, the plants give us new portraits of themselves. These images I have very little control over.
This series is a response to questioning how I could use my photography to promote more holistic ways of connecting to and living with the non-human living world around us. Could I challenge the history of landscape and nature photography to create a process in which I collaborated with my living subjects? How could I give as much dignity to urban plant life as traditional landscape photography has given pristine, untouched, wild landscapes? This project is an attempt to produce a feeling of magic; to provoke questions into the spirit of plants, their intangible essences, and a recognition that there is so much we don't know, a challenge to human exceptionalism.
