Ecological Image-Making in Bat Creek

Abstract

Ecological Image-Making in Bat Creek is a practice-based research project investigating my ongoing collaborative experiments in analogue photography based out of a local creek site in Sydney’s Northern Beaches. The project expands upon my self-titled methodology Ecological Image-Making as a means of celebrating the confluence of organisms, materials and forces at play within my practice. This paper outlines three series of work that have developed throughout the duration of the project. Inhabiting Emulsion introduces my ongoing collaboration with fungus through the material of 35mm film. Walking, psychogeography and the biology of mycelium are connected here through analysis of the research of Rebecca Solnit, Merlin Sheldrake and Anna Tsing. The creative practices of Lucas Ihlein, Rebecca Mayo and Alia Parker, alongside Stanley Breeden’s evocative writing introduce the potential for fungi and non-linear modes of exploration to defamiliarize local places or familiar objects. Dirtscapes outlines the historical roots of the project through the work and writings of Robert Morris, Robert Smithson, and Rebecca Najdowski. Theoretically underpinned by the work of Manuel DeLanda and Jane Bennett, both dirt-matter and analogue photographic materials are shown to be imbued with creative and active qualities. Ecotone introduces themes of site fidelity and tension in relation to analogue photography. Tensions between flying fox and human communities are analysed through the work of Deborah Bird Rose. Artists for whom certain locations are highly significant and call for return to make work such as Bonita Ely and James Tylor are discussed, alongside my experimental darkroom practice contending with light and time.