This lumen print was created during an art residency at BigCi (Bilpin International Ground for Creative Initiatives) in the Blue Mountains, NSW. The residency offered a rare opportunity to spend extended time with the local landscape, focusing on native bush tucker plants and their relationships to Country, ecology, and cultural knowledge.

My research during the residency was informed by the generosity of the BigCi hosts and their ongoing work with the land, with particular inspiration drawn from Yuri Bolotin’s explorations and research, alongside published studies on local flora. This layered approach — observation, conversation, and time in nature — guided the selection of plants and the way I worked with them.

Lumen prints are cameraless photographs created by placing organic plant material directly onto black-and-white photographic paper and exposing it to sunlight for several hours. Through this slow process, light, photographic materials, and organic matter interact, revealing subtle colours, traces, and transformations shaped by time and environmental conditions.

Each print is unique and unrepeatable, reflecting a specific moment of contact between plant, paper, and sun. The resulting image carries the quiet presence of the landscape in which it was made, inviting reflection on the cycle of life, decay, and our connection with nature.

This series was exhibited at BigCi at the conclusion of the residency.