Photographer Stig Marlon Weston is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the series ‘Grove’. To see Stig’s body of work, click on any image.

Going back along the forest paths where as child I used to hide and play and construct worlds of fantasy, I today carry with me huge rolls of film. By ditching the camera and letting nature decide on its own decisive moment I hope to catch a glimpse of that elusive primal feeling that only the innocent young and the wild beast have in common.

In the middle of the night I hang my photographic film in the open air to let the landscape expose itself on my canvas of chemicals. Back home again I develop my film and make life size contact prints. The tears and scratches left by the process are just as much a part of the imprint of the trees as the shape and shadow they leave on the film.

By this process the film ends up as a sampling tool, dipped and left to soak in the unadulterated darkness of the natural night. The impressions left on the film have not been placed there as a result of careful framing by a subjective eye looking through a viewfinder. Instead these photographs are the visible chemical recordings of physical processes going on independently of the interpreting observer.

Facing the images that in a way are made by themselves we get to see Mother Nature caught by a maelstrom of photons, rearing up on her hind legs looking back at us with a defiant stare. Nature is not something we can force into right angles and a balanced composition. But in these works she is pinned down through natural chemical reactions, and the laws of physics show us the seething breeding ground of our inner phantasms.

Artist statement

My photography focuses on process based and philosophical photography. Looking at how we look at the world around us I want to connect the way we choose to see things with how they actually look.

Experimenting with photograms and cameraless photography I have been collecting my imprints of reality for more than 20 years. My photographs end up as visual experiences made by something outside myself and I think of photography as having nothing to do with the mechanical contraption of a camera. Closing the gap between the physical subject and the photographic image using cameraless techniques makes my pictures become proof of a truth unseen by human eyes. Encouraging the viewer to reflect on what they expect to see and understand in a photograph I want them to compare this to what is actually there in front of them and what they ad themselves in their own minds eye.

All images and text © Stig Marlon Weston