In the soil, in the air
An experimental darkroom printing and photographic series that considers rhododendron ponticum’s impact on regeneration work on Scotland’s temperate rainforest.
Building on ideas from spectral geographies, the photographs consider rhododendron ponticum through presence in absence, as a kind of haunting of forest futures, and its relations with forest pasts.
Building on ideas from spectral geographies, the photographs consider rhododendron ponticum through presence in absence, as a kind of haunting of forest futures, and its relations with forest pasts.
The Alliance for Scotland’s Rainforest are investigating whether rhododendron initiates ‘a multi-decade pause in natural regeneration of vascular plants’ within temperate rainforest soil, even after intensive clearing. Theories include symbiotic relationships between rhododendron and ericoid mycorrhiza, an imprint of which may remain in the soil, disrupting broadleaf recovery. A lichen specialist described rhododendron within this context as a disrupter of possible future forests and of forest durational timings, as cleared areas recover rich levels of biodiversity more slowly than those recovering from storm damage, or a preventer of forest regeneration completely as new saplings cannot grow in time to meet the needs of habitat indicator lichens on failing trees — unmaking a potential rainforest into a never-again rainforest. 
My photographic practice considers rhododendron through this spectrality, where the roots of contemporary rainforest degradation and future localised extinctions are woven together through a disorienting sense of presence even in absence of rhododendron in rainforest soils. Through an experimental printing process that navigates cyclically between the sites of forest - darkroom - forest, this set of images considers cleared rhododendron as a presence that lingers in the soil as a kind of haunting, as its imprint on subterranean ecological relations plays out across the human-eye view of the forest above ground.
Responding to Despard and Gallagher’s writing on rhododendron as photomedia (2018) that which mediates light, I echo the plant’s propensity to block light by collecting leaves during volunteer clearing activities, soaking them in a home-made solution and printing with them on film in the darkroom. As the light at Glenan enters the camera, the imprint of the rhododendron-rich solution and the phenols from the leaves interacts with the photo-chemical substrate of the film to produce a trace image overlaying the forest.
My process inherently retains traces of participation in rhododendron removal whilst echoing the nature of this practice by clearing the film of the solution and leaves, creating scratches and blurs on the images. The film, like rainforest soil, becomes an archive of relations between human and plant, between field and practice. It is this presence in absence highlighted by this experimental approach that allows me to consider rhododendron stories as both hauntings and inscriptions upon particular places and practices, and upon wider narratives of rainforest extinctions and resurgence. The hybrid photographic-print images offer a reminder that future rainforests and the human labours of care that connect them will unfold alongside negotiation and cohabitation with rhododendron ponticum across Gibson and Warren’s ‘stretched temporal plane’ of arboreal timescales
References
Despard, E. and Gallagher, M. (2018) ‘Media Ecologies of Plant Invasion’, in Environmental Humanities, 10:2, p.370-396
Gibson, C. and Warren, A. (2020) ‘Keeping Time with Trees: Climatechange, forest resources, and experimental relations with the future’, in Geoforum, 108, pp. 325-337.