M - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

I
t can be argued that culturally and historically the
practise of Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey
constitutes a bridge between one of the earliest
photographic antecedents and contemporary
environmental concerns. The daguerreotype came about
through artist Louis Daguerre’s search for ways of fixing
the transient ‘sun drawings’ of scientist Joseph Niepce. A
similar combination of natural phenomena and human
in(ter)vention informs the oeuvre of Ackroyd and
Harvey. However in addition to an interest in the
historical processes of fixing transient images, they also
possess a contemporary concern for global warming and
the fragility of eco-systems.
Although Ackroyd and Harvey are best known
for their photographic works made by exploiting the light
sensitive properties of grass seedlings, their interests
stretch beyond into a wide array of intersecting
disciplines: sculpture, photography, architecture, sound
and ecology provide forums for discourse on deep
ecology. They are both informed by and inform research
in genetics; since 1997 they have worked with scientists
at IGER (Institute of Grassland and Environmental
Research) on the ageing process and thereby the
prolongation of their images.
“In the greater body of our artwork we play with many
materials exploring processes of growth, transformation and
decay, and we embrace the transience and ephemeral
nature of our materials. Yet somehow the fragility of these
chlorophyll apparitions urged us to make moves to preserve
them longer.”
Their use of grass as a creative medium is not limited to
photographic processes; several architecturally related
works like Fly Tower, Life Drawing and Dilston Grove have
received living ‘skins’ of grass which imbue the inert
architectural forms with a regenerating power. However
it is their almost compulsive interest in regeneration and
loss that drives most of their projects, irrespective of the
material employed. For example in Twist, recycled slate
metaphorically teams up with the generation of wind and
solar power to not only transform an existing landmark,
but to provide light.
But perhaps their most collaborative and
interdisciplinary work has taken place in the extremities
of the High Arctic through the Cape Farewell project
which seeks to provide a cultural response to the true
scale of environmental and climate change through
dialogue between artists and scientists; Ackroyd and
Harvey have been involved in the programme since its
inception in 2003.
One of their most compelling works from this
collaboration Stranded (2006), addresses most poignantly
one of their chief concerns: how and why loss matters. A
beached minke whale encrusted with alum crystals
iconically reflects on irretrievable extinction.
Roland Barthes believed that conceptually, death
is implicit in photographs - and that therefore
photography is the medium through which we
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experience the reality of death. How, in your
views, may your organic ‘photographs’ relate to
Barthes’ view of mortality?
It is through the life-force of the living material and the
production of the pigment chlorophyll that our
photographs exist. We have arrived at a point where
we can confer greater ‘life’ on our bio-chemical
photographs by killing the grass. Death is inevitably
bound up in our process. But the nature of the death has
changed. Our living grass photographs were subject to
other forces apart from light that corrupted and
degraded the image – humidity and air transported
spores of mold. By rapidly drying the grass photograph,
framing it and conserving it in optimum conditions, the
grass and image can be preserved potentially for years.
However, we do not ascribe ‘immobility’ to our
photographs, and we have had to confront their essential
organic nature, the sensitivity of chlorophyll (even when
dried) in being exposed to excessive light. The urge to
try and arrest the loss of these chlorophyll apparitions
has led us to work closely with biochemists and
geneticists. How do you stem the inevitable flow of
decay when working with a living material? There are
steps we have taken to slow it down, to attempt to
stabilise change, and this has allowed the work to gain a
wider audience. We have shown work in a dried state, in
low light, for up to two years in exhibition.
In your work Afterlife, the transience of a busy
city space metaphorically portrays passing lives.
How does the transient medium you have chosen
reflect on the individual?
We made our first portrait in 1995, Portrait of Ernesta.
We decided to make something intimate and traditional.
Ernesta was an elderly woman, born in the village where
we exhibited the work, and who for the best part of her
life had worked in the fields. The small church where the
work was shown had lain empty for years. The response
to the work was very moving, and the mortality of the
subject and the material suddenly came together in a
way that made sense to us. It had a ghostly presence,
‘there and not there’. The closer you came towards the
image the more it seemed to disperse in front of your
eyes. It triggered an emotional response in the viewer
and us.
Mother and Child (1998) was a very personal
work. Our daughter was then 8 months old, and we
made the photograph in our apartment above our
studio. It was the first time we grew a work for
exhibition in the stay-green grass. We dried, framed and
freighted it off to the USA for an exhibition about art,
science and genetics. It was quite liberating – the work
had come of age in one way.
Testament (aka portrait of Barbara) (1998) took
the intimacy of the portrait and blew it up to a
monumental scale. The image was 25 ft x 25 ft. The face
became a living landscape. The work was shown in a
disused Salvation Army Building, and we came across the