© Nick Verhaeghe – Sulpher Cosmonaut

Description

During my university, I was looking towards a more innovative and abstract image visualization. I always felt there was something missing in my photographic imagery. I wanted to make my visual language more tangible. I found this answer in analog photography, mainly in analog film development with organic film developers. In other words I solely use plants and organic matter as developer for my photographic films. Because each plant needs to leave there characther on my images. “Without the plant there is no image and without the concept there is no plant to work with.” My workprocess consists of photographing less conventionally attractive environments, and trying to reveal a hidden elegance within them. In both stages, photographing & developing, I constantly encounter surprising effects. And rather than avoid these, I try to blend these effects with the intended theme of my work. The result should correspond with the unconscious, visualizing a personal dreamworld. In this semi-Dionysian way of working, nature gets the chance to partly take over. I want to create stories that are unique in approach. I reflect this in my insatiable search for new plants and new processes that can be a added value to my work. I think it is important in the world of today to make people escape in these natural dreamworlds. And let them drift off to these little island of freedom and organic imagination.

This image is called “Sulphur Cosmonaut” ,from the series “Interminably waiting” During a trip in 2018 through Italy I searched for an apocalyptic symbolism, collecting visual scenes that possessed a baneful atmosphere but showing them in vibrant Colours. The story I imagined was that the world was coming to an end. Given the chance, how would they visualize their world. What would have remained, what would they see? Not focussing on the desolation itself, but searching hope and beauty in something inevitable. To stay within the story, I gathered all kinds of weeds and shrubs from the vicinity like rosemary, nettle and other hard-to-beat herbs. And in my typical style used them in myorganic film development process.