The World is Astonishing by Amanda Marchand

Issue 144

My photo-based work grapples with what is raw and immutable in the human psyche, with deep affection for the natural world. The photographic medium, uniquely light and time-based, is the conceptual framework for the experimental, poetic work I make about our mortal planet. 

For more than four years I have been working cameraless, exploring the lumen process. These are lumen prints – sun-prints made with black & white photo papers. I have been making this work in nature, at different residencies and my family’s Canadian cabin, where the birds and ferns and wildflowers abound. Each image is a personal mediation – as the paper shifts color, slowly or quickly, in the variegated light of the sun. 

This process has roots in the first photographs made before chemical fixes. I have been discovering a "color alphabet" with the 100+ brands of photo paper I have been using, colors that lie completely dormant until touched by the sun. Sometimes this latency feels like the most important thing – that the paper is wrapped, waiting in thick casing or black plastic, and again in envelopes or boxes, sometimes for many decades, and that its purpose - to become grey - is foiled. 

The World is Astonishing with You in it: 
A 21st Century Field Guide to the Birds, Ferns and Wildflowers
Part of this work employs three reference books – North American Field Guides to birds, ferns and wildflowers. These three, sweet, vintage books belonged to my mother and are identical with green, cloth covers. I cut the photo paper into sections, then expose it in the sun, making one mark per quadrant (or half) with an edge of the respective Field Guide. Each collage references a disappearing species (bird, fern, flower) through its title. 

Lumen Notebook
The larger series employs in its making: art, reference, and photo books on nature from my personal library and the residencies I attend. The images reference pictorial components of the landscape, horizon lines and vertical markers, the movement of sun across sky... Many of the books I use are dear to me, and I re-purpose their titles. The work is a playful dialogue with existing works of art and photography. 

For me, the fugitive lumen colors are markers of time; geologic, photographic, and human time. Chemical fix dramatically alters lumen color. Because of this, I have been using a scanner to “preserve” lumen color, where the scanner light participates in making the final image. I like how this tool expands the conversation I’m interested in about time, merging early photographic processes with new technology. 

Amanda Marchand is a Canadian photo-based artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her artist book, "The World is Astonishing with You in it: A 21st Century Field Guide to the Birds, Ferns and Wildflowers" is on preorder and will be released in May, edition of 50.
To view more of Amanda’s work visit her website or follow @amandabethmarchand