Ackroyd & Harvey

Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey produce large on-site tableaux vivants. They sow grass on a vertical surface in a giant darkroom and project a negative for several days during the germination period. Photosynthesis replaces the chemical gelatin-silver process: Blades of grass become natural pixels and reveal the image in hues varying from yellow to green according to the intensity of the exposure to the original image. In this all-digital era, visitors were confronted with the materiality of the photographic object as they ran their fingertips over a tailor-made seven-meter high vegetal installation displayed in a church in Vevey.