On 2013’s shortest night I sat outside in a field near Oxford watching an old Olympus OM–2 camera take a four-hour-exposure photograph of a small piece of burnt wood. Having a big roll of black and white photographic paper in my studio I decided to keep myself warm by playing with it and a painting I’d made in 2011 on 9 gsm abaca tissue paper, using this translucent work as a negative for a contact print. At dawn I returned to the studio and developed it.

The series has continued, exposing works in various places and developing in varied makeshift darkrooms, bathrooms, etc.

On the reverses of the works are written the location, day and time of the original exposure. The photographs became as much indices of the environment of their exposure as of the paintings: the dew-fall on their surfaces; the ground on which they were placed (the grass transferring water to the photographs’ reverses, offset to the photographic surfaces upon rolling them up); snail trails; my clumsy handling; hedgehogs; etc,

Gelatin silver prints
250 x 200 cm approx.