BASICS TO BASICS II
Extended Recipes for Ecological Photo-chemistry
BOOK RELEASE PARTY & PANEL DISCUSSION
You are invited to join us for the book release party of BACK TO BASICS II : Extended Recipes for Ecological Photo-chemistry published by The Sustainable Darkroom. This event is free and open to the public. Doors will open at 5 PM then at 6 PM SHARP there will be a panel discussion with Andrés Pardo Piccone aka General Treegan of Curioso Lab, Adrian Cousins, and Dr. Scott Williams led by Hannah Fletcher of the Sustainable Darkroom. This is your first chance to pick up a copy of the book, and to hear from some of the contributors.
"In this volume, Andrés has done much of the leg work for us. He brings us a bountiful expanse of variety: with recipes that all stem from SIMPLE developed in his early research and shared in Back to Basics Vol. 1. These recipes add balance. They offer multiple avenues to bring a conscious diversity to your own ecological photographic practice. We are laying the foundations for a new understanding of photography that must be adaptable, balanced, and varied. With these tools, we soon find that we are no longer limited by environments, materials, or access. But we can take these factors as starting points for how we make, and what we make."
A snippet of the intro from Edd Carr: "reading Andrés’ words in Back to Basics Vol. 1 & 2, you are confronted with a starkly different vision for photography. One where the photographer is not alone, but surrounded by others - human and nonhuman - in a garden of image-making plenty. A photographic commune, where knowledge is a shared resource; not to line the pockets of polluting megacorps in some mythical capitalist utopia, but in advancing an equitable future for generations to come.
So while you’ve been busy with your practice, Andrés has been quietly working away, digging the beds and furrows of our photographic garden, ready for the seeds to be planted and fruits to grow."
SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 12TH - DOORS AT 5 PM PANEL DISCUSSION AT 6 PM SHARP
LOCATION: The Center For Fiction - 5 min walk from 2, 3, 4, 5, A, C, B, D, N, Q, R, & G trains.
PANELISTS IN CONVERSATION
Hannah Fletcher is a visual artist, based in the UK, working predominantly across analogue photography. Their practice adapts around materials and environments, weaving photographic knowledge, processes and systems into ecological frameworks. This provides them with avenues through which they can rethink photographic futures that depart from capitalist ideologies. They are the founder of the Sustainable Darkroom, a charity dedicated to researching and disseminating lower-toxicity photographic materials and methods. They also co-direct London Alternative Photography Collective, and is represented by Land Art Agency and a facilitator of sustainability within the arts.
Andrés Pardo Piccone is an experimental filmmaker, editor, professor, and researcher based in Montevideo, Uruguay. With over 25 years of experience in film production and postproduction, he has worked across documentary, fiction, and experimental cinema. He is the founder of CuriosoLab, a space for exploring sustainable photography and low-impact image-making rooted in everyday environments. His recent work focuses on historical photo processes, alternative chemistry, and the use of local or discarded materials in the film lab. He is the author of Back to Basics and A Guide to Ecological Photochemistry, and is currently researching Edward Bach solarization as a way to extract energy for energy-driven developers. His ongoing projects include a critical and philosophical investigation into image-making, sustainability, and the potential of analog practices to rethink our relationship with capitalism, technology, nature, and time.
Adrian Cousins is an experimental filmmaker exploring the emotional response to moving images created with expired stocks, and obsolete and unique processes. His work is ‘consciously amateur’, with a focus on recording life and moments, often focussing on the tiniest of details illuminated by transient natural light.
The only person to have processed Kodachrome motion picture film in colour since its demise, he is currently focused on creating novel colour-forming developers and accessible diffusible coupler compounds.
Dr. Scott Williams is a Professor of Inorganic Chemistry in the RIT School of Chemistry and Materials Science. His science journey began by earning a B.S. in Biochemistry from Purdue University, and a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Montana State University. Upon graduation, he spent several years as a Laser Research Specialist at the Regional Laser and Biotechnology Laboratory housed within the University of Pennsylvania under the direction of Dr. Robin Hochstrasser. He has traveled quite the winding road. His first academic position was in the RIT School of Photography teaching Photographic Chemistry and Optics during which time he invented Caffenol, then Director of Research and Development for a small company called Foto-wear, Inc. developing paper-based coatings for thermal transfer media and inventor on over 35 patented technologies. Then, out to the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology to take on Physical Chemistry teaching and research roles. Back to RIT, to the School of Print Media, teaching and research in the materials and processes used in commercial printing. He found new international colleagues and friends of IARIGAI. Then, about a decade ago, he walked across the Infinity Quad, to the School of Chemistry and Materials Science to focus on inorganic synthesis and functional materials. Dr Scott Williams lives and works in Rochester New York.