Ashprint Reborn

Some projects take me years to complete. This is one of those. In fact, I have not made a new image in this series for over 5 years. I was recently contacted to have a new one commissioned. This may not look like the most impressive photograph of a sunflower, but sometimes art is about the concept.

I call it an “Ash Print” – I photograph a piece of nature, burn it, collect the ashes, then filter water through the ashes until I make ink. I then put it in an empty inkjet printer cartridge and pass the image through dozens of times to build up density. The final product is imperfect. It breaks the idea of photography being a reproducible artform. There is only one, then the ashes are gone… Life, death, rebirth.