Leonard, Colleen

My photographic practice is essentially camera-less. For the past decade, I have felt the need to work more sustainably, and out in the world instead of behind a screen. By experimenting with alternative processes, such as photograms, cyanotypes, and lumen printing, I explore our relationship to nature in the everyday, while celebrating its forms. I use the world as a camera: these more natural photographic processes allow for a creative collaboration between sunlight, paper, chemistry, and water. Making is a slow process that depends on weather, temperatures, and time. Through walking, I rediscover plant life within everyday urban environments and embrace botanical form and design. Even when fully processed, these images continue to live, breathe, and evolve, existing in a constant state of reaction to - and with - their environment. 

Although simple at first glance, life-size hand prints draw us closer to the works, revealing not only the artist’s hand, but also unexpected details and surprising textures from within the plants and papers. Ever changing, the images remind us of the impermanence of the natural world, the inevitable passing of time, and our human fragility. I hope that through slowing down and deeply noticing the smallest forms in nature we may rediscover childhood feelings of wonder and an increased sense of interconnectedness with the world around us.