Thoughts on Eco Photo: An Alternative Process Camp

Thoughts on Eco Photo: An Alternative Process Camp

CPR GUEST ESSAY

BY MARY DEFER

Mary Defer is a visual artist living
and working in Cleveland. 

I grew up on a farm in Streetsboro, Ohio, on land where my great-grandparents lived in the 1930s, in the house where my grandparents raised my father and his brothers. Living there instilled within me a deep connection to nature, along with particular sensitivities to memory and time, elements central to photography as a medium and to my art, as well. 

From an early age, I had a curiosity about photography, which was encouraged by family and friends. When I was in middle school, my mother enrolled in a darkroom course at a nearby vocational high school. I showed interest, and she lent me her camera to expose a roll of film. One family friend invited me to assemble projector presentations of his color slides during a visit. Another gave me photography books that I’d pore over.

Darkroom photography was offered at my high school, but scheduling conflicts always arose. As a result, during my first semester at Kenyon College, my priority was to at long last enroll in a photography class. I signed up for an introductory darkroom course with professor Gregory Spaid and was enthralled. The world seemed to slow down when I peered through a lens, and, conversely, hours evaporated in the quiet sanctuary of the darkroom. 

While registering for courses sophomore year, my interest was immediately piqued by an offering titled The Photography of Invention, also led by Professor Spaid, which focused on “the inventive use of photography to construct works of art.” We would mix photography with other mediums and learn about a variety of alternative processes such as cyanotype and palladium printing. Needless to say, I signed up, and the course proved to be a formative experience. Each session began with a short exercise to cultivate creativity. This sense of experimentation continues to shape my artistic practice. 

To clearly define alternative process photography can be difficult, as there are many interpretations of what techniques fall under this umbrella. Generally, alternative processes differ from the precision and methodology of traditional photography methods in that they incorporate the artist’s hand. Sometimes, they may not even use a camera to create an image. You can see brushstrokes on paper, the negative itself might be handmade, and organic irregularities are embraced.. 

One of the reasons I love analog photography is the way it encourages me to be present and attentive. Alternative processes highlight this deliberation even more. Because many of the processes involve ultraviolet light and botanical items, they cause me to feel increasingly connected to nature and the surrounding world. 

The changing of the seasons was never more apparent than during the summer when I taught myself how to make lumens. This printing process involves exposing silver gelatin paper to the sun. Expired or fogged paper will work, allowing you to reuse material that might otherwise be discarded. Though the paper is intended for black and white darkroom printing, unexpected colors emerge. These vibrant hues are ephemeral, and once fixed, they shift to rich shades of brown, orange, and yellow. In the evenings after work, I’d move a printing frame around the yard outside of my apartment, chasing slivers of sunlight as shadows lengthened. Sitting beside the frame, I’d marvel as the paper changed color.

When I learned that the Cleveland Print Room and Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP) were working together to develop an alternative process camp, I felt profoundly excited. All these things I love converging! Alternative processes, creating with nature, the Print Room, CVNP itself. The national park is a short drive from Streetsboro, and the valley is rife with memories. Walking and biking with my relatives on the Towpath. Visiting Camp Manatoc for family nights when my brother and father were there with Scouts. Dancing at Happy Days Lodge when I first got married. Then, during a particularly difficult subsequent season of life, hiking the trails as a way to cope.

The opportunity to collaborate on an experience for middle school aged campers involving these processes, in this place, is a dream come true. I have been privileged to view CVNP as such a constant in my life, and I believe that everyone deserves access to these places, the space to experiment with creativity, and to feel connected to the world around them.

The exhibition “Ordinary Miracles: Robert Glenn Ketchum’s Photographs of Cuyahoga Valley National Park” has been especially present in my mind throughout the visioning and planning sessions for Eco Photo. Recently on display at the Akron Art Museum, the show introduced me to the work of Ketchum. Documenting land that is now known as CVNP in the late 1980s, Ketchum wrote in his book on the project, “I am very concerned that photographers in America have created a subtly dangerous hierarchy that only champions the most obvious natural monuments and park locations—the most spectacular of our wildlands—at the expense of our more ‘ordinary’ landscapes.” If you look closely, the so-called ordinary becomes miraculous. Alternative processes further demonstrate the notion of “ordinary miracles” in the way they transform everyday objects. Paper, emulsion, and sunlight combine to create magic before our eyes.