Organic
Impressions:
Unearthing
the
Chthonic
Organic Impressions approaches the “hidden world” of the oak tree underground, using soil and roots as both the subject and material for photographs, to understand how trees construct their own world unrelated to human activity. The project’s origin began with the development of six Chthonotypes (kuh-thon-oh-types; a word derived from khthon, the Greek for soil and underworld, and týpos, the Greek for imprint), a series of photographs made with soil extracted from the roots of the Queen Elizabeth I Oak. Before the incorporation of tannin in my project Arboreal Encounters I became concerned that the fences which surrounded the trees of my study maintained a form of distance that I had originally sought to challenge.
To question this, I attended a workshop by the camera less photographic artist, Hannah Fletcher, that taught attendees how to incorporate soil into photographic images via chromatographs — a process combining the scientific process of separating out components in a mixture, typically with inks and dyes, together with photosensitive solution. As the chemical and physical structure of soil is a result of both the independent tree and its collective community, the prints that emerged act as a kind of fingerprint of the tree and its environment, as well as being representative of its chemical make-up and soil type.
However, what first began as a method to achieve a sense of symbolic proximity to the heritage trees, ended up becoming an investigation of the tree’s life underground. As Arboreal Encounters came to focus largely on how oak trees exist within human culture, how might I depict a more plant-oriented perspective of the oak’s life? From this question I then developed six Rhizotypes (ri-zoh-types; a word derived from rhíza, the Greek for root, and typos, the Greek for imprint), a series of oval cyanotypes made with soil debris and dead roots cut from the trunk of a six-year-old oak sapling. The sapling itself features as a component of the exhibition practice, allowing the audience to encounter a living embodiment of the project’s subject, almost as a piece of living sculpture. The sapling also appears as the subject of Stages of unearthing an oak tree, a triptych detailing the gradual reveal of the oak’s root system, and To suspend a root system, an 8 x 11 cm cyanotype that displays the roots of the oak, printed on handmade silk paper.
Untitled, Chthonotype I, Queen Elizabeth I Oak. Soil collected from the landscape of Queen Elizabeth I Oak, mixed with silver nitrate and exposed on A5 watercolour paper, from the project ‘Organic Impressions’, 2021.
Untitled, Chthonotype II, Queen Elizabeth I Oak. Soil collected from the landscape of Queen Elizabeth I Oak, mixed with silver nitrate and exposed on A5 watercolour paper, from the project ‘Organic Impressions’, 2021.
“Regardless of either my own or Fletcher’s process, it is interesting to think of the resulting Chthonotypes functioning as if a metamorphosis of soil to bark. As the resulting prints detail, in part, an inscription of the soil’s physical movement from one environment to another (from the earth to the print), they also visualise the transformation of material from one part of the tree to another. Put plainly, the combination of soil, water and bark could be said to relate to the trunk’s ability to draw up water from the soil through its vascular system using their roots below ground. As the Chthonotypes begin with soil and result in images that resemble bark it could be said that they impress this organic method within the creative process and visual outcome; using water and silver nitrate to effectively shift a soil solution into a bark composition. Expanding on this idea, such images that contain and are made with part of the tree’s organic material, and that also visually represent an element of the tree’s form, exemplifies a type of plant/human, phyto/photo hybridisation that positions photographic practice as a malleable, porous medium. Furthermore, as the chemical and physical structure of soil is a result of both the independent tree and its collective community, the prints that emerge act as a kind of fingerprint of the specific tree and its specific environment, as well as being representative of its chemical make-up and soil type. As the prints in Arboreal Encounters are examples of the tree’s individuality, the Chthonotypes express this chemically through their unique soil composition. ”
— Epha J. Roe, notes on Organic Impressions, ‘These Rooted Bodies’, 2024.
In mid-2022, while organising an exhibition in Brighton, I re-potted an oak sapling into a glass bowl for it to become part of the display. As part of the process I decided to unearth the oak’s roots and see what would happen if I began to document it. To do so I set up a make-shift outdoor studio and made several images of the oak sapling in different stages. The three images that result from this were subsequently titled ‘Stages of Unearthing an Oak Tree’. No harm was done to the tree in the process and a great deal of care was taken to remove the soil from around their dense root system.
Once the tree was re-potted, several smaller roots were left unearthed as they did not form part of the tree’s predominant root structure. Some time later these were taken off and used to produce a series of what I’ve come to call Rhizotypes, a combination of the Greek word rhizo, meaning root, and týpos meaning imprint. As such, the project developed from its initial stages to overcome physical connection to the Queen Elizabeth I Oak, into an examination of the oak tree’s hidden world beneath the soil.
Stages I, II and II of Unearthing an Oak Tree, Thorngrafton, Kings Caple, Hereford, UK, from the series Organic Impressions as part of the practice-based PhD project ‘These Rooted Bodies: Photographic Encounters with Plant Intelligence and the English oak tree through Material, Theory and Practice’. 2022. Digital scans from 120mm negative.
“This focus on components of the oak tree that predominantly exist unseen within the earth could be thought of here as exemplifying the chthonic, a Greek term that refers to living in, under or beneath the earth. As photographic historian Jane Vuorinen notes, the chthonic is often associated with notions of death; soil being a repository for decay and degeneration or “a dangerous underworld where living beings should not enter” (Vuorinen, 2023: 10). To the zoologist and ecofeminist scholar Donna J. Haraway, the chthonic is even conceived as a conceptual tool to move away from notions of the Anthropocene (the acknowledgement of human activity having a significant impact on the earth’s climate and ecosystem) and towards what she calls the Chthulucene, that which requires a form of ‘sympoeisis’, or making-with, holding at once the intertwined realities of humans, animals and plants (Hathaway, 2016: 59).
In its broadest sense, the notion of sympoeisis accepts that “nothing makes itself: nothing is really autopoietic or self-organizing” (Hathaway, 2016: 58). In terms of creative methods, notions of sympoeisis, as Hathaway describes it, also function to detail the ways in which my own practice engages with plants to create images with them. These concepts are, of course, not specific to Organic Impressions, but relate to all the sub-projects. In the case of both Organic Impressions and Arboreal Encounters, these forms of sympoeisis result in images that are not only of something but also are something in and of themselves: “they are not the absent subject made present by way of a figurative likeness, but the actual presence of that subject, in its ever-changing, ever-evolving temporal ongoing” (Vuorinen, 2023: 11). Although these observations are more directly related to the Chthonotypes in that the prints both represent and are made of the earth, the Rhizotypes also embody this function through the cyanotype’s inevitable, slowly fading impermanence, as well as their coming into being through the physical contact between plant and paper.”
— Epha J. Roe, notes on Organic Impressions, ‘These Rooted Bodies’, 2024.
Untitled, Rhizotype I, Roots collected from the lower trunk of a living oak sapling. Mounted 4.5 x 7cm (approx.) print on watercolour, from the project ‘Organic Impressions’, 2023.
Untitled, Rhizotype II, Roots collected from the lower trunk of a living oak sapling. Mounted 4.5 x 7cm (approx.) print on watercolour, from the project ‘Organic Impressions’, 2023.
Photograph detailing the installation of a Rhizotype on handmade silk paper (far-left) and three Chthonotypes (right-hand side) from the exhibition Roots: A Journey of Creative Discovery with England’s Heritage Oak trees, The Artery Studios, Worcester, 2023.
Project Branches
Still life of an oak tree seedling, Kington, Herefordshire. Digital photograph from the project ‘Organic Impressions’, 2023.
In 2022, after de-installing the show ‘Photosymbiosis’ at ONCA Gallery, Brighton — my first solo show depicting work-in-progress from the PhD of the same name — my step-father and I went to visit an oak tree he’d planted in his parents back garden when he was just seven years old. As it happened, the take down of the exhibition serendipitously coincided with the first year the oak produced acorns. During our time there we collected a handful to take back home with the intention of propagating them, however unfortunately none of them managed to root. Another batch, however, was set up from Epsom, Surrey, by my step-grandfather, Ron, one of which was successfully propagated and is depicted here.
‘Still life of an oak tree seedling’ is an enduring example of the ways in which national heritage and family heritage can collide, often informing, engaging with and elevating each other. The stories humans share with the natural world however simple or complex, personal or global, play a significant part in what binds the emotional and physical relations shared between them. Much like ‘Son of Royal Oak’ is dually imbued with its own material significance as well as the memories and association of the lost parent tree that gave it its name, this seedling is a shared record of itself, my step-father’s personal life, our newly emerged connection through the branches of an oak tree, as well as the life of the parent tree.
Although ‘These Rooted Bodies’ exists and began as an objective research project associated with university education, towards the latter half of its existence it has sprung many emotional and personal branches that have put many of my theoretical interests into practice in the every-day. Stories of personal association to particular trees, for example, which remain a solid core to my research interests, rather than simply remaining theoretical have instead flowered in my own life, particularly towards the oak seedling and sapling, which themselves bare specific, personal relationships to my parents.
It is because of these symbolisms that occur in my own life that I feel it important to draw attention to the fact that notable, ancient or heritage trees do not have a monopoly on symbolic relations between humans and the natural world. These symbols can be large or small, intimate or grand, however they are of no less value than those we are more conditioned to recognise.