Dust To Dust

(ashes as ink)

A photograph is only a representation of the thing, but not the thing at all. It is just ink – but what if the medium and subject were one and the same. I developed a process I call an “Ash Print”. I photograph a piece of nature, burn it, collect the ashes, then filter water through the ashes to make ink. I then pour it in an empty inkjet printer cartridge and pass the image through dozens of times to slowly build up density. The final product is a photographic print of an object that is actually the object itself. It breaks the idea of photography being a reproducible artform. There is only one, then the ashes are gone forever. Life, death, rebirth.