Biological Photography

Biological Photography; A Brief Theoretical Overview (2005)
Dennis DeHart

Biological photography is a broad term that can be used to discuss the imaging of living organisms and their various properties. In this essay, I will create four distinct categories, in order to briefly discuss characteristic, and examples of various approaches to biological photography. This essay will focus specifically on characteristics associated with imaging of plants.

Representational
Perhaps the most familiar category of biological imaging would be representational. This would include the literal documentation, and recording of the biological world and its phenomena. Representational can be further broken down into external and internal imaging. External imaging includes the outside form, such as for example a morphological drawing. Internal imaging could include, for example, an x-ray

Some of the earliest photographs, and more specifically plant photography, can be traced back to Henry Fox Talbot, who, amongst being one of the pioneers of photography, was a botanist who used photosensitive papers, to capture the impressions of plants (known as a photogenic drawing), and which he later made into a series titled “The Pencil of Nature.” 1 Contemporary practices in the field of biology include the use of digital microscopic tools, such as the Confocal Microscope, which is used to image living cells. 2 Between these two kinds of imaging, both historically and technically, is a rich and varied approach to biological photography.

Album di Disegni Fotogenici: The "Bertoloni Album", William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877). Album of 36 photogenic drawings

Living Pictures
The second category is living pictures, which is a term from Biologist Roger Hangarter’s essay entitled “The Art of Photosynthesis.”3 In his paper, Dr. Hangarter discusses how the pigment in chlorophyll (which drives photosynthesis) is a light sensitive surface, and can record images. Hangarter uses this principal and places images on plants in order to demonstrates properties of chlorophyll. Contemporary artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey use these same principles of chlorophyll, in which they print large-scale photographic images directly onto grass surfaces. 4 A prime characteristic of living pictures is the temporal quality of the image. The image is fugitive, and bound to change as the properties of the organic matter it is placed on, changes. The image is thus in a symbiotic relationship with the living organism.

Adaptive Image (Mimicry)
An adaptive image is similar to a Living Picture, in the sense that it includes living organisms. In essence the organism mimics or takes on the characteristics of the environment (or context). It is this mimicry that becomes a kind of photograph that I have termed an adaptive image. The idea of the Adaptive Image, comes from Roger Caillois’s essay “Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia.” At the core of his essay, Caillois parallels human psychological phenomena, and the biological world. He writes:

“Morphological mimicry could then be, after the fashion of chromatic mimicry, an actual photography, but of the form and the relief, a photography on the level of the object, and not on that of the images, a reproduction in three-dimensional space with solids and voids: sculpture photography or better teleplasty if one strips the word of any metaphysical content.”

Caillois writes this in the context of explaining a living organism (he uses a butterfly as one example) adaptation to predators. He suggests that biological phenomena in essence is a kind of 3-d photography; A photography that is biological in origins and adaptive to its environment. Thus the phenomena of mimicry becomes it own kind of photography. 5

Systems Phenomena
Systems phenomena is a form of imaging in which the sum of varying parts, form a lager whole. If we take representational imaging, for example, and reduce it into pure visual information, over time certain patterns and phenomena will become distinguishable. Thus we might think of systems phenomena as a kind of technological living picture. Systems phenomena is rooted in technologies ability to amass information, and through this, interpret patterns, forms, and systems. These systems form a kind of imaging that reduces literal visual representation into a kind of pure form.

Another way to discuss this would be to take it to the virtual world. For instance artist Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneu, use variety of virtual reality techniques including interactivity through natural interfaces, in order to explore “patterns of living nature, and peoples interaction with artificial natural spaces.” They create a virtual interpretation of biology, and examine that system through another kind of visualization. 6

As another example, Roger Hangarter and myself, in the piece “101 Tropisms" we compiled 101 time-lapse movies of plant tropism onto one picture plane. We then compiled the images (information), and created a pattern generator through computer programming. The finished piece is never the same, since the patterns are programmed to run randomly. What emerges is a system in which the pattern of information becomes the photograph. Unlike Talbot, it is no longer fixed but instead a system of patterns continually forming unique pictures, though innately the image is never made permanent.

Roger Hangarter and Dennis DeHart, "101 Tropisms", Video Projection, Programming, 2004

In each of these four very brief examples, I have attempted to illuminate different aspects and approaches to biological imaging. Its important to consider there is no one approach in the imaging of living organisms, and that in fact a different kind of understanding and appreciation may emerge out of the most theoretical of approaches.

References

1. Beauty of Another Order, Photography in Science, Ann Thomas, New Haven: Yale University Press and National Gallery of Canada, 1997

2. Science, “Special Section on Biological Imaging,” Hurtley / Helmuth, PP. 75-102, April 2, 2003

3. “The Art of Photosynthesis,” Dr. Roger Hangarter (Provided by Dr. Hangarter)

4. Aperture, Issue #165, “Photos on the Grass (At Last) the Chlorophyll Apparitions of Ackroyd and Harvey, ” Interview By Martin Barnes, PP. 66-71, Winter 2002

5. October, The First Decade 1976-1986, "Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia," Roger Caillois, MIT Press

6. Virtual Art, From Illusion to Immersion, Oliver Grau, MIT Press, Cambridge Mass., London, England, 2003