Text - Image Index - Photosynthesis - biotic imprinting on the leaves of Bromeliad plants - © Lloyd Godman

Photo-syn-thesis

Organic inscriptions, biotic imprinting, photosynthetic marks. While culture imposes its own marks on nature, nature itself is a huge intricate web of complex marks.

In fact the largest photosensitive emulsion is the very fabric of the planet, plants.

" Since the late 1990s Lloyd's work has been more a celebration of light "as origin, process and outcome". Light is the "giver of life" through the process of photosynthesis, is central to the process of photographic image-making, but is also ironically "the medium which metamorphoses on the screen as advertising or corporate radiation' and thus "indirectly drives the global mechanism of consumerism". That consumer society depends on the diversity of abundance of flora and fauna on the planet, the very ecosystem that is the boiler house and drives life on this planet".

Lawrence Jones Art Link Vol 25 no 4

"...... . He acknowledges that photography indirectly impacts on diversity in that it has become inextricably involved with visual marketing and consumerism. His aesthetic interventions, however, are attempts to alleviate consumerism's negative effects. After all, he explains, the world appears to us from the perspective of satellite imaging, captured in still images on Google Earth, as a giant photo-sensitive emulsion, changing shape and colour with the seasons. Human intervention plays an increasingly large role in "transforming the image we inhabit.

Godman's work with bromeliads explores their properties of adaptation for the purposes of a sustainable art practice. For his photographic seriesPhotosynthesis, begun in 1996, he masked selected areas of bromeliad leaves from sunlight for more than four months, enabling the sun to inscribe various alchemic symbols and contemporary signage onto the leaves. When unmasked, the inscriptions were different in tonality from the rest of the plant. Godman photographed the results, producing a series of exquisite images. The bromeliad is a South American species, some subspecies of which are xerophytes with the capacity to survive in arid conditions, often while suspended in air. Some reverse the photosynthetic cycle by photosynthesising at night, producing oxygen that might be beneficial to human beings as they sleep. In 2007, Godman conducted an experiment in which he made a hanging structure from bromeliads and suspended it in front of the studio at St Andrews. At night, when illuminated with spotlights, the structure assumed an ethereal appearance. He is collaborating on a plan for a city building with a hanging bromeliad garden".

Helen McDonald - March 7, 2009 - The Art of Survival - The Age -