Photographic Encounters with Plant Intelligence and the English Oak tree through Material, Theory and Practice
THESE ROOTED BODIES:
An Introduction
In 2018 I began my part-time, practice-based PhD project at the University of Brighton, supervised by photographer Xavier Ribas and photographic historian Annebella Pollen. Titled ‘These Rooted Bodies: Photographic Encounters with Plant Intelligence and the English Oak through Material, Theory and Practice’, the project’s title refers to a mixture of its attributes. On one hand it represents the many oaks I have visited and made images with, their roots stretching across both the breadth of England and the breadth of time. However, it also refers to the human bodies whose lives have become connected with them, including my own. As ‘These Rooted Bodies’ can be read as both with a full stop or as the beginning of a sentence, and can refer to both the oak trees independently or to human’s co-rooted lives, it was chosen to demonstrate the complexity of how trees and human nature are consistently interwoven.
This space is for me to share the on-going creative research that takes place as part of the practice-based PhD, as well as some theoretical context that ‘roots’ the work. As it stands, the PhD is split into three projects that both operate individually and co-operate with each other. As an experimental project that will not necessarily end once the PhD is submitted, the work will most likely shift and grow, as will the written aspects that contextualise it. This space is therefore energetic and will require revisitation. The overarching theme, however, discussed in more detail below, provides a crystallised structure through which the creative work may be explored and experienced.
Image above ‘Mature Oak, Root, Hergest Croft Estate, Hergest Croft, Kington, Herefordshire’ from the series Perceiving Phytochrome 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’, 2024. Digital scan from 120mm negative.
‘Part II’, of Stages of Unearthing an Oak Tree, 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 scan from 120mm negative.
Project Overview
My research combines photographic practice with ideas of plant intelligence (that plants have an awareness of their surroundings, or some form of cognition) to explore how, and if, photographs can be made with, rather than just of, the plants that feature as their subject. Taking the English oak as a case study (a tree that has specific ties to English cultural history but also to the origins of photography), I use a combination of traditional and experimental photographic processes to examine if the oaks of my study can become a part of their own representation. The oaks that feature within my research range in their ages and cultural value, however the project began as a specific exploration of ‘heritage trees’ and what it means to attribute concepts of heritage to the natural world.
As an example of this, the ancient oaks that take part in the ‘Arboreal Encounters’ aspect of my study form part of the ‘Great British Trees’, a list created in 2002 by the environmentalist organisation and tree charity, The Tree Council, to commemorate the late-Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Subsequently named ‘heritage trees’, each of them are conserved and framed as tourist destinations largely due to their associations with human history and myth. What interests me, and drew me to the concept of heritage trees in the first place, is their unique position as being highly valued cultural objects while at the same time existing as living beings. The types of conservation efforts placed around them to maintain their living reminded me, as an ex-student of Art History, of certain museum practices which attempt to create environments that limit or slow down the process of degradation through controlled conditions. To apply such ideas to the natural world and living beings, therefore, felt strange despite their need.
Heritage is, however, a human construct, and therefore to view such practices through research that emphasises the communicative, sensory ability of trees (plant intelligence), is to expand their identity beyond the limits of human-related imagination and the stories that can, in part, reduce their existence to a product of human culture and history. Heritage can, in this sense, be seen as yet another form of commodification of the natural world that humans have placed upon it, while at the same time being a tool to potentially un-do the harm done to the natural world by humans. It is these complexities that lie at the intersection of nature-culture studies that intrigue me, and just one way in which creative research surrounding plant intelligence has impacted my ways of thinking around the natural world. As my research has continued and notions of plant intelligence have been further integrated within my photographic practice, I have had to augment my creative approaches to make sure I don’t simply replicate the commodification I sought to remove. This later led to new projects, or the development of pre-existing ones, that incorporated elements of the tree’s material or were inspired by their organic functions. However, rather than individually over-emphasising the tree’s organic functionality or their cultural frameworks, my research seeks a balance, developing the ways in which oak trees are experienced, encountered, and conceptualised as highly potent cultural symbols and complex organisms. This is explored and expanded in more detail within the sub-projects, each using different photographic methods to image both human and ecological aspects of the tree’s identity, considering them holistically. All three projects are essentially on-going, feature both final and work-in-progress images, and are subject to change as a result.
The three sub-projects that make up ‘These Rooted Bodies’ are detailed in brief, below.
Arboreal Encounters: Heritage Oaks in the English Landscape
The project’s origin began with a series of six large-format photographic prints of English heritage oak trees These prints are made using a combination of 120mm black and white negatives which are then made into cyanotypes and then dyed with oak tannin, a chemical compound found within the leaves and bark of oak leaves. In short, the project approaches how plants might, through the incorporation of their organic material, become part of the process of their own representation. As Arboreal Encounters is a combination of cultural history and photographic practice, the project’s website display contains the images, additional project information, but also a history of each individual tree.
“The inconsistencies across each individual tree’s maintenance, their public visibility, the financial investment in the tree as tourist destinations, as examples, all reinforce how human-centred and considered such ideas of heritage trees are [...] this form of categorisation relies heavily on cultural associations rather than scientific ones, outlining how certain practices are deployed and upheld to maintain the trees as living cultural artefacts. What became clear through the practice-based research was that even the term ‘heritage’ in this context referred solely to the stories or ideas attached to the trees; their vegetal presence becoming vessels of, and witnesses to, specific human events, or even becoming synonymous with specific people (Orlow, 2017). Furthermore, as the word heritage, etymologically speaking, is derived from the concept of inheritance, property, or objects of human possession, its transference to aspects of the natural world reproduces the assumption that plants, and more generally the natural world, are property. These important and contextual elements of Arboreal Encounters simultaneously reveal a set of creative challenges. If the tree’s value is primarily humanly constructed, how might the introduction of plant intelligence act as a critical tool to shift this focus towards the plants themselves? Conversely, as the stories and cultural associations that surround them are largely what has come to define them and prolong their life, the erasure of these cultural associations would deny and withhold a significant portion of the trees’ identities.”
“Two years into the project (2020) I expanded my original engagement with the trees as black and white, medium format photographs, to explore more experimental aspects of my practice-based research. An example of this was the development of cyanotype prints which I began to combine with tannin (a polyphenolic biomolecule widely distributed within many species of plants, including the oak tree). In doing so, connections emerged alluding to the historically interconnected roots of the oak tree and the origins of photography. In many ways the oak is literally embedded within the fibres of photographic material history. For example, in 1841 William Henry Fox Talbot was granted a patent for the calotype process, a solution containing silver nitrate and gallic acid harvested from the galls of oak trees to produce a technique that prepared photosensitive paper, but also the print’s enhancement post-exposure, which would later become known as ‘developing’ (Doing, 2020). As the photographer and academic Karel Doing notes, the use of organic compounds in photographic developer “has lived on ever since, but this fact has often been obscured by technical language” (Doing, 2020). Fox Talbot’s friend and co-inventor of the paper-based negative, Sir John Hershel, made his own photographic engagements with plants through the invention of the phytotype, later known as the anthotype, drawing on the photosensitive properties in flowers and leaves to make images (Yapper, 2023). Recent research surrounding the French organic chemist and photographer Victor Regnault, also a friend of Fox Talbot and Hershel, and his early work in thermodynamics leading to the production of pyrogallic acid (an organic compound produced from heating gallic acid, which can also be obtained from tannin), further enmeshes the oak’s chemical properties within the production and origins of photographic technology. Hershel was of course also the inventor of the cyanotype, or blueprints, made by combining ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide to create a light sensitive solution […] my project Arboreal Encounters not only references these processes through the production of cyanotype prints of heritage oak trees which I then tone with tannin, but they also combine them.”
— Epha J. Roe, notes on the prominence of the oak tree within photographic history, ‘These Rooted Bodies’, 2024.
Organic Impressions: Unearthing the Chthonic
This project develops upon the experimental aspects of Arboreal Encounters; the exploration of plant matter and its introduction into photographic processes. These include photographs of an oak sapling being unearthed, images made using roots from the sapling, and with soil samples taken from the Queen Elizabeth I oak (a heritage tree featured within Arboreal Encounters). 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 tree and its environment, as well as being representative of its particular chemical make-up and soil type. The prints therefore refer to the plant as both subject and object, removing elements of objectivity (and objectification) through the inclusion of the plant within their representation, but also through unearthing aspects of their material world that are predominantly hidden from view.
‘Part I, II and III’, of Stages of Unearthing an Oak Tree, 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 negatives.
“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 much as the prints in Arboreal Encounters offer examples of the tree’s aesthetic and historical individuality, the Chthonotypes express this chemically through their unique soil composition. To philosopher of science John Dupré and artist Gemma Anderson, plants and their roots contribute “to one of the most vital features of soil, its structure” (Dupré and Anderson, 2021), continuing that: “The arrangement of the physical particles of soil into more or less compact components of various sizes, and with more or less spaces between particles to facilitate the circulation of air, water, and nutrients has a decisive influence on the ability of soil to sustain plant growth” (Dupré and Anderson, 2021). This form of symbiosis between soil and plant roots present new forms of seeing and contextualising the root and soil, setting out their interdependence (Kumar, 2015: 10), while also illuminating them both as ‘stuff’ and as processes. The composition of soil as a body of material often made up by the very thing it sustains, i.e. a mass of decayed plant and animal matter that feeds and sustains living ones, gives rise to a form of ancestral, cross-species nourishment that implies not only that soil is a transgenerational entity, but also functions as an ecosystem itself.”
“As the communication of climate crisis concern can often involve and be influenced by visual culture and in turn the photographic representation of forests, woods and trees, it is the convergence of trees’ enduring prominence in photographic history and popular culture that has led to my own deepening of thought around how photographs and trees might be further (re)considered. However, it is also the incorporation of plant material within creative processes and the biological functionality of plants as a tool to inform photographic practice that has begun to emerge as an important component of creatively representing plants, furthering a material and often site-specific bond between subject and object, plant and photograph. This emergence is largely a response to scholarly discussions within disciplines such as critical plant-studies that seek to re-address the balance between the relationship of plants and humans, itself informed by the concept of plant intelligence. In short, it is no longer enough to address the subject of plants within the context of the climate emergency by simply (re)producing traditional methods of representation. Contemporary artistic and scholarly discussions regarding the representation of plants include but are not limited to: how can plants (within art) stop being reduced simply to their human uses or relations? In other words, are there ways in which the identity of plants that are the subject of artistic enquiry can be more fully incorporated within the process of their representation, therefore de-centring their human relations without fully excluding them? Rather than photographs being made simply to depict plants, how might photographs made with plants function to disrupt ideas of the natural world as merely the backdrop to human action, rather than a stimulating, generative and responsive collection of entities within their own right? The definition of the term ‘made with plants’, in this context, differs depending on the artist in question, however what it does signify is a philosophical shift in the way in which artists conceive and engage with plants as living entities with their own rights. ”
— Epha J. Roe, notes on plant intelligence and creative practice, ‘These Rooted Bodies’, 2024.
Perceiving Phytochrome: Towards Arboreal Sight and Sensation
The third sub-project explores how trees might ‘see’, drawing inspiration from a chemical pigment in their leaves called phytochrome that detects seasonal change through the far-red light in the atmosphere. Using a combination of slow shutter speeds and black and white infrared film which picks up on light dimly visible to the human eye, Perceiving Phytochrome focusses on the animacy of trees.
Images of ‘Root, Trunk and Canopy of a Mature Oak in Hergest Croft Estate, Hergest Croft, Kington, U.K., from the series Perceiving Phytochrome 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 negatives.
“To subsequently pair the photographic depiction of wind with the technique of long-exposure and its effects upon tree branches, for example, is to often render them blurred to the point of invisibility. This is, of course, a photographic issue. One challenge of photography, or of the still image in general, can be to imply movement and, concurrently, to display the passing of time. Indeed, one dominant discourse around photography is in its ability to “freeze” time and to therefore act as a kind of artefact of an event, or person (Wells, 2011: 263). In that sense there are interesting similarities in the ways in which humans develop symbolism around events or people in relation to both trees and photography. Both can, in independent but overlapping ways, act as tools, triggers, or artefacts for the practice and experience of memory. They are also, of course, both direct products of light. The difference between plants and photographs is of course obvious; trees are not flat, domestic objects that can be pulled out over a family dinner or kept folded in a wallet. As sessile beings they are rooted to the ground and even command a sense of power in that if memories are to be evoked one must travel to them, unless one of course makes a picture. ”
“The sapling, a self-seeder grown from an acorn from a near-by, mature oak, living in the grounds of my parent’s neighbours back-garden, was uprooted and potted up by my mother soon after I developed an interest in oak trees as a cultural (and national) symbol. Its potting, both personal and intimate, was intended to preserve a sapling specific to my parent’s environment which my mother would then nurture until I had my own outdoor space in which to plant it. Through this method the oak tree came to embody many inter-related subjects, such as notions of family, of place, of time, and of human-nature relations. As such, its age almost directly correlates with the amount of time I have spent conducting my PhD research; its physical growth both literally and poetically representing the material growth of my own knowledge and fascination with the scientific, social and cultural aspects of the oak tree. Its significance as a visual focal point, being literally put front-and-centre, was a way to spatially and metaphorically centre the plant and its exploration through research and creative encounters within the vegetal world. Placing the oak centrally is of course a literal technique to “centre” nature within a cultural context, however it also performs other functions. Between my own observations and gallery staff who invigilated both spaces over the course of both exhibitions, the eyesight of the audience was first drawn to the tree, their attention then travelling to the related artworks from which the oak inspired. Although subtle, this effect mirrors my own creative processes and places the audience within the shoes of my own journey as they move through the space.”
— Epha J. Roe, notes on the display of a living oak for the exhibition element of ‘These Rooted Bodies’, 2024.
The Living Oak: Nature on Display
In late-June 2022 I answered (and was successful in winning) an open call from the Brighton-based environmental arts charity and gallery ONCA, which requested proposal briefs for a three-week exhibition in August the same year. A prominent yet experimental component of the exhibition’s proposal at ONCA was the display of a living oak tree in a glass bowl within the space, placed upon a low, white plinth in the centre of the room. This decision was taken to put on display aspects of the oak’s hidden world within the earth and for people to notice changes if they were to revisit the exhibition.
The oak’s inclusion has since been a major influence in way in which I have gathered thoughts around the project itself, particularly around what impact the living oak within an exhibition space as upon the visual art. These aren’t necessarily answerable questions, however as components of the oak sapling have since been introduced into elements of the practice, such as the Rhizotypes within Organic Impressions, the living oak has become an important component of the project’s whole. As a living entity, the oak is not an art piece, although it might be said that the oak exists as a form of ‘sculpture’ when they enter an exhibition space. As such, this extension to the project exists almost entirely within an exhibition format and images that document the display. The tree, as a living, private and personal element of the practice (more information on this is included in the quote above) is therefore only exhibited when I feel it is appropriate and when the conditions of the gallery can ensure the oak’s health.
One year later, for my second solo show, Roots, I exhibited an oak seedling grown from an acorn from an oak my stepfather planted in his parent’s garden when he was nine year old (see picture). This continuation of the plant as a presence within the space and the extended personal relationships held with aspects of the natural world, are considered as ‘branches’ to the main trunk of the PhD project, rather than an essential element to them. That said, I consider them an important aspect of the research, the display, but also to the philosophy of ‘These Rooted Bodies’ that refers to the ways in which nature effects our daily lives.
Oak seedling in Acorn vase, as part of ‘Roots: A Creative Journey of Discovery with England’s Heritage Oak Trees’, an exhibition at The Artery Studios, Worcester, UK., 2023.
Below are a series of installation images of ‘These Rooted Bodies’ that include the display of the living oak tree for the exhibitions Photosymbiosis (2022), ONCA Gallery, Brighton, and Roots (2023), The Artery Studios, Worcester.
