Solar Cyanotypes in Post-Industrial Ecologies
— cyanotype / solar exposure / post-industrial ecologies / field-based practice / dérive / spontaneous plants / urban margins / textile printing / prussian blue / more-than-human ritual / collective image-making / environmental awareness
Cyanotype
Sunlight
Plants
Ruins
Fieldwork
Textiles
Exposure
Blue
Ecology
Ritual
Collective
Place
Time
Environment
Image
Solar Cyanotypes: Fieldwork in Urban Ecologies
A field-based work where walking, spontaneous plants and solar cyanotype come together as a methodology for artistic research.
Developed as part of One Green Eye, the Other Blue: Herbarium of the Anthropocene, the workshop explores photography as a situated practice connecting ecological observation, botanical histories, artists' publishing and computational image-making. Rather than treating cyanotype simply as an alternative photographic process, we engage with it as a way of producing knowledge through attention, movement and collaboration.
WORKSHOP
The workshop combines cyanotype chemistry, field observation and collective image-making through a sequence of laboratory and outdoor activities.
Walking becomes both research method and photographic practice, to observe the relationships between plants, architecture and the city, paying particular attention to spontaneous vegetation and overlooked ecological spaces. Rather than collecting specimens immediately, the workshop encourages slow observation, conversation and the development of a personal relationship with a chosen plant to create solar cyanotypes using the plants gathered during the walk. Exposure, washing and drying become part of a process in which sunlight, water, plant material and photographic chemistry collaborate in the production of each image.
The workshop understands cyanotype as more than an image-making technique: it becomes a form of ecological fieldwork where walking, plants, chemistry, weather and collective attention work together to generate situated photographic knowledge.
CONTEXT
Solar Cyanotypes: Fieldwork in Urban Ecologies
Concept and facilitation: paula roush
Commissioned by: Experimental Photo Festival 2026
Location:
Centre Cívic Pati Llimona
Carrer del Regomir, 3
08002 Barcelona
Fieldwork location:
Parc de la Ciutadella
(Hivernacle, Umbracle and surrounding parkland)
Date:
Wednesday 22 July 2026
Outline
Introduction to One Green Eye, the Other Blue and the methodology of fieldwork
Introduction to cyanotype chemistry and coating of paper or fabric
Fieldwalk through Parc de la Ciutadella
Observation of spontaneous plants, botanical histories and urban ecologies
Plant gathering and site-specific conversations
Solar exposure using collected plants
Washing and development of cyanotypes
Annotation of prints with botanical and site-specific observations
Collective reflection and documentation
