Photographer Kari Varner is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Rosignano Solvay’. To see Kari ’s body of work, click on any photograph.

I stumbled upon alternative darkroom development very much by accident when I became fascinated by the town of Rosignano Solvay.

Situated on the west coast of Tuscany, the town is named after the Solvay chemical plant that has been producing soda ash there for over a century. The effluent from this production has turned to the sand bone white and the water a tropical aquamarine. The beaches, aptly named Spiagge Bianche (White Beaches), are popular tourist destinations despite the health and environmental concerns surrounding the air, sand and water.

In seeking to explore the impact of soda ash production on the landscape, I began to develop my prints in soda ash supplemented with a small amount of developer. By any standard the prints are riddled with flaws. Scratched, stained and bleached, the distortions of the print speak to the alteration of the land and water as the prints emerge from the very substance enacting change upon the landscape.

This series opened up many possibilities for creating a dialogue through development, which led to further experimentation with alternative methods for film and paper processing.

If you are interested in learning more about the town, Bloomberg published an excellent article on the town in March of 2022.

Artist Statement 

The echoes of industry and human’s presence are inscribed upon the landscape. This body of work explores these traces, along with the ecological and economic value we assign to altered environments. Drawing from the environment as subject and material, images are formed from the very materials enacting change in the land and water. In this organic alchemical process of formation, the photograph itself emerges from an altered ecology.

I form relationships with landscapes by wandering and foraging for photographs and plants alike. Coming away with both in hand, the two are intimately tied. Invasive plants are conscripted into the process of making. Cut and boiled for photographic developer their petals picked and crushed to make anthotype emulsion; though labeled as undesirable, destructive and worthy of eradication, through these processes, the emergence of the photograph is entirely reliant upon them.

By using these materials, I become implicated in these processes of environmental alteration. Often the material experiments I undertake seem a reflection of our experiments on the environment itself. How much can the material or land tolerate before it ceases to be recognized, before its identity is irrevocably altered or lost.

All images and text © Kari Varner