Images of Tasmania
Christine Owen
According to electrical engineer Semyon Kirlian and his wife Valentina all living things have an energy field or aura. They invented Kirilian photographic processes in the mid-twentieth century to depict the physical and emotional states of their living subjects. The photographs, with their connection to ‘spirit photography’, remind me of the mysterious nature of plants and their unseen forces that are all around us.
Here I have taken contact prints on silver-gelatin photo-sensitive paper from photographs of flowers from my garden and then etched the paper in an etching mordant, finally washing them in rainwater. This tension between the fictive and phenomenal is at the heart of my enquiry. My aim is to give expression to their metaphysical energy fields, fantastical and grounded – to tune in to those senses and to “see” plants in a different light.
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