Photographer Laurie Beck Peterson is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the ‘Symbiosis’ series. To see Laurie ’s body of work, click on any photograph.

Symbiosis is a series of chlorophyll prints that uses the living leaf as both photographic medium and collaborator. Created without ink or pigment, each image is formed solely through the chlorophyll within the leaf, allowing light, time, and the leaf’s own biological processes to determine the final work.

Photographic images of the human figure, hands, nests, and other fragments of memory are embedded within living leaves. As the leaf continues its natural cycle, its network of veins, shifts in color, and gradual decay begin to overtake the image. The body and the plant become intertwined, their structures echoing one another until the distinction between photograph and leaf begins to dissolve.

I think of the leaf as a vessel, carrying each image through its own life span. The photograph is temporary; it fades as the leaf ages, while the architecture of the leaf often remains visible long after the image has disappeared. The work embraces this transformation, allowing impermanence to become an essential part of the process rather than something to resist.

Symbiosis considers the interconnectedness of human and plant life, where memory, mortality, and regeneration exist within the same living surface. Each print is a collaboration with nature, reminding us that all living things are shaped by time, and that change itself becomes the enduring record.

Laurie Beck Peterson is a US-based artist known for her work with 19th-century photographic processes. Her practice explores impermanence, ephemerality, and the cycles of growth and decay in the natural world. In her most recent projects, she incorporates sustainable, plant-based printing techniques that align with her environmental themes.

Peterson is currently on faculty at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia, PA. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, and is held in numerous public and private collections, including The Fox Talbot Museum at Lacock Abbey and The Royal Photographic Society.

Her work has been featured in publications such as Rfotofolio, The Hand Magazine, Gum Printing: A Step-by-Step Manual, Santa Fe Photographic Workshop Portraits, and Anthotype Emulsions (Volumes 1 and 3) and most recently is featured in the book Eroding Forms, launched at the 2025 Ephemere Photo Fest, Tokyo, Japan. She is represented by UpStart Modern Gallery in Sausalito, California.

All images and text © Laurie Beck Peterson