Photo/Synthesis is an ongoing series of unique chromogenic photograms made without a camera. In the color darkroom, I arrange plants, seeds, fragments of fabric, plastic, and other found materials directly onto light-sensitive paper. Through exposure, movement, masking, and chance, these materials leave behind luminous traces: part botanical specimen, part celestial body, part imagined organism.
 

The title refers to two processes of transformation through light. Photosynthesis converts light into living matter; photography converts light into image. Here, the two meet physically. Leaves and stems touch photographic emulsion while synthetic materials interrupt, contain, and reshape their forms.

I am interested less in nature and the manufactured world as opposites than in the increasingly unstable boundary between them. Organic silhouettes merge with geometric structures; fragments resemble cells, planets, vessels, or microscopic landscapes. Scale becomes uncertain, and familiar materials begin to suggest unfamiliar systems.
 

Because the images are composed directly in darkness, their final appearance can never be completely predicted. The darkroom becomes a site of collaboration between material, light, chemistry, gesture, and accident. Rather than depicting a world in front of the camera, each photogram records an event: a temporary arrangement of matter transformed by light.