Ghost Garden

I began creating lumen prints when my parents first experienced memory loss and dementia. The plants were gathered from their gardens and mine as well as on outings with them as an effort to create new memories to replace the fading ones. The resulting photographs are ghost images of the original plants, fleeting memories of summers and shared times. I continue to experiment with the process.

Lumen printing is a camera-less technique creating photograms by arranging organic materials on black and white light sensitive paper and placing them in the sun to develop. The colors that emerge are influenced by the type of paper and plants used, the level of humidity, and the duration and intensity of sunlight. If not treated with fixer, the prints will eventually fade away.