Herbarium of Photographic Emulsions: First Edition, Savannah Dodd

This hand-stitched booklet combines historical practices adopted from botany and photography to make a reference book of anthotype emulsions which connects the artist to the land.

The term “herbarium” refers to the practice of pressing, drying, and cataloguing plant species for the purpose of scientific study. This herbarium adds an additional step to this process by creating an anthotype photogram of each plant collected. The term “anthotype” refers to a photographic process that uses photosensitive extracts from plants and UV exposure from the sun to create prints.

The artist makes photosensitive emulsions from plants that she forages on the Ards Peninsula where she lives, and she applies the emulsions on cotton rag paper. She uses pressed cuttings of the plants to create anthotype prints of the same plant that was used to make the emulsion. The result is a photographic herbarium documenting the photosensitive properties of local plant life on the Ards Peninsula.

Softcover
23 pages
140 x 190 mm