FRAMES Photography Podcast
FRAMES Photography Podcast
Oriana Poindexter
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In today's episode, W. Scott Olsen speaks with Oriana Poindexter, an American-Italian photographic artist and marine scientist whose work combines photography, freediving, marine specimens, and alternative processes to explore the changing life of the ocean.
You can visit Oriana's website here.
Find out more and join FRAMES here.
I had the opportunity to get to know the director of the Catalina Museum, and she invited me to come see the space. They have this gallery upstairs in the museum that is kind of like a it's like a chapel. It's it's an octagonal room. It has a skylight in the middle. Um, it's kind of separate from the rest of the space. And it immediately was like, yes, this is this is the place that I can make this exhibit in. I could create something that would be similar to the feeling that I have when I'm swimming through the kelp forest and you kind of come into a clearing and there's so much light. And so I knew I wanted to create a series of cyanotypes on silk panels that you could kind of enter and and feel the scale of the kelp around you. I spent 10 days in Catalina in 2024 and made the 10 panels. And then I was thinking about what to put on the walls, because none of that was going to go on the walls. The walls were still empty. Um, and I had initially thought I would use that for kind of didactic information and maybe a couple works on paper that would be tighter and more composed and maybe represent a couple different species. But then I got to thinking about some of the experiences that I'd had diving in Catalina, and one that really has stuck with me is being enveloped in schools of small bait fish like sardines and anchovies, and kind of swirling through the kelp forest with those schools of fish. So obviously, I had to create a school of sardines, but I really didn't um come to this conclusion until about maybe six weeks before the show was supposed to open. And uh so I think I I think I gave the uh director of the museum a little bit of a panic attack when she first heard about it. She called me. She was like, What is this a year about sardines you want to move on the wall?
SPEAKER_00This photography podcast is brought to you by Frames, a quarterly printed photography magazine. Here is today's host, W. Scott Olson, with another fascinating conversation.
SPEAKER_01Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to another podcast from Frames Magazine. My name is Scott Olson, and my lord, folks, today we are gonna have the best conversation. There's a kind of photography out there that is just, I'm gonna use a technical term here, just so bloody cool that it is impressive, and I'm jealous and envious. And it's, you know, not all photography takes place in a studio or on 32nd Avenue or in a forest somewhere. There's there's people who understand photography or imagine photography, by which I mean light-based art, not just camera and lens, but understand light-based art in ways that go well beyond uh the normal, at least, you know, my normal. And what they create is a kind of imagery that has a punch to it, a kind of way to reach out and grab your heart and grab your mind and make you want to care about things that seem to be abstract beforehand, but you get to it and you think, oh my lord, this is necessary. This is stuff I have got to do. A lot of this work, of course, is environmental. And there's nobody out there doing more creative, more sort of soul-storing work than Orianna Poindexter. Orianna is an artist and a marine scientist. Her work's been in Smithsonian Magazine, New York Times, Wall Street Journal. It's just all over the place. It's been exhibited at the Laguna Art Museum, the Oceanside Museum of the Art, the Center of F for Fine Art Photography. Um, she's got an exhibit coming up pretty soon. Uh, what's it got? Oriana Point Duster uh field notes. This will be at the Photographer's Eye Collective Gallery from July 11th through August 1st. She's got an exhibition currently running at the Catalina Museum of Art and History called the Blue Forest. This is work that these are photograms, these are cyanotypes. This is work that sort of says, I'm going to do something different with light. Now, when I saw that, you know, she was in Catalina, of course, you may remember an earlier interview in Frames magazine where I reached out to Whitney Latour and I said, you know, who is now the president and CEO of the Catalina Island Conservancy? Before that, when we knew her at Frames, she was in charge of visuals and immersive experiences at NatGEO. I wrote to Whitney, I said, Hey, I'm going to be interviewing Oriana. You know, what can you tell me? And I get this email back that she begins, Oriana is amazing. She goes, I love her approach. She goes, as someone interested in the crossover between art and nature or art and science, I'm always exploring how we can use art as a gateway to science. And Oriana is particularly good at this. She's a wonderful teacher, incorporates her scientific knowledge. A student comes in to make art and leaves, knowing something about endemic and invasive species as well. I love her work, she said. And I'm going to put my name right after that because I love Oriana's work as well. And I cannot wait to get into this conversation. Oriana, welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
SPEAKER_05Thank you for having me. I'm I'm doing well. Um, yeah, thank you for that introduction. That's really nice uh of Whitney to have shared that. We had a great time together uh with her daughter on Catalina.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, she she's one of my favorite people. But um, you know, Oriana, you are, I think, the first photographer that we've entered here on the podcast. You know, I'm doing some background research and stuff, where I come along and there's a write-up about you in an outlet called a photo editor, where it says Oriana is a classic Californian based in Lajala and seems like the type of character someone invent if they wanted a female James Bond or Indiana Jones. You're the first James Bond or Indiana Jones that we've had. But I see where that comes from. I really do.
SPEAKER_04If uh if it was all underwater, I'm uh I'm not I'm not terribly useful on land.
SPEAKER_01Okay. Um well, okay. Let's go back to some of the beginnings here. Because here's what I know. Um, you grew up in Laguna Beach. When college came along, you tootled off to Princeton, you were going to be pre-med. That sort of morphed into ecology and evolutionary biology. But then you talk about a left turn. Suddenly you're giving up science and you you got a BA in photographic arts, you know, the black and white darkroom stuff. How in the world did that change happen?
SPEAKER_05Um yeah, I uh I went to college back east at Princeton. I was actually recruited as a competitive swimmer. Um and I uh I quit that about halfway through uh undergrad and uh was really that had been a big part of um my identity growing up. Um and at that point, um kind of really thinking seriously about what I what I was drawn to and what I was really enjoying. And um I had the good fortune to end up in a dark room photography class with Emmett Gowen. Um and just really got Is this just an elective?
SPEAKER_01I mean, this was just to fill some credit, or did you have an interest?
SPEAKER_05I had taken one darkroom photography class in high school and I was interested in it. I hadn't really gotten hooked, but I I thought it was cool, I thought it was interesting, I enjoyed the dark room, um, and I enjoyed the printing process specifically. In those classes with um with Emmett at Princeton, I really I really got hooked. Um, and specifically with kind of the idea of photography and cameras and the photographic printing processes as tools to explore your world and kind of as a license to go go do what you love to do and and make it productive. So that was really what what drew me in. I was far from the ocean and far from most bodies of water that I was familiar with um at the time, and the dark room was a kind of a a safe space in that way.
SPEAKER_01Um well, there is that thing called the Atlantic, you know, just just Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04I used to take the the the train um from Princeton all the way to Coney Island, um just to just to see the water, you know. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So okay, so you you get hooked, but then when you go back to scripts, I mean you go, you mean you you have probably the the least attractive job title that I've heard recently. Fisheries economics analyst. Oh, I mean, that's necessary work. So if you're working for NOAA, you're working for scripts, you you didn't make a quick change into photography.
SPEAKER_05No, so I yeah, I graduated college and I thought, you know, one could just be an artist that you just like went out and you just began doing it, and then somebody would reward you for it. And it turns out that's not really how it works. And I ended up getting really interested in fish and in specifically in in fish collections, in marine collections, um, okay, which is what took me down to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the first place. So these are like natural history collections where um you have a library essentially, but instead of books, there's jars with preserved organisms in them.
SPEAKER_01Um not display aquariums, not that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_05No, no, these are all um passed away. Um so I was really interested in that from a photographic perspective. Um, and I started out actually as an intern um in the collection just to be allowed to photograph and have access. And that quickly made me realize that there was so much that I wanted to learn about the ocean, um, which kind of led me to apply to grad school. And then I during grad school, I think I was um trying to do the most serious thing possible since I had come in as an artist, basically. Uh and and so I ended up studying um fisheries economics, but that really what drew me into that initially was photography. I was interested in photographing seafood markets kind of as an extension of that initial work with the collections.
SPEAKER_02Um, that's very cool.
SPEAKER_05And and thinking about seafood markets as this like inflection point where things come out of the ocean and they transition into human culture and food, um, and how that looks different in different places in the world. Um, and the fact that for a lot of people who don't live near the ocean and don't have a relationship with it, that the seafood counter is the closest they get most of the time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um, that that really is their their view and their portal into what's going on underwater.
SPEAKER_01Um so what you're doing at this time though is pretty much just documentary, you know, I don't have black and white or color or whatever, but standard photography.
SPEAKER_05Standard, yeah, using a camera, taking a picture. Yeah. Yeah. When it was mostly digital, um, the the seafood market work was mostly digital.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Did you have the Nikonos at this time? Was it already in?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that was kind of concurrent with uh while I was working um for Noah Fisheries. I got a Nikonos camera because I really wanted to start photographing underwater, but I couldn't afford, you know, a real housing. So a Nikonos, you know, the film is expensive, but it's only a little bit at a time. Um but the Nikonos was really, really great. It was a tool that let me go free diving and and learn about what's going on underwater. And it was kind of a motivator to go free diving more frequently than I might have if I didn't have a camera. And it's so small that, you know, it's not encumbering you in the way that a big digital housing does. And I wasn't using lights because I I still don't use lights underwater. Um I just can't be bothered. But I um the Nikonos was was wonderful. Um, and at that point I also was interested in kind of trying to pick up a dark room practice again. I had gotten an enlarger from a friend's dad and set up a little dark room in the closet of my studio apartment, and I started trying to make black and white prints again um of the of the photographs I was taking in the kelp forest. And that was kind of frustrating because they weren't looking the way that they they felt when I took them.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah, I don't know if we're ready to go go underwater yet, but well, no, I was saying because you've you've brought up a number of things here. But but let's go back, you know, you actually complained about kelp when you when you were doing a lot of surfing. How did it change in your mind from being an annoyance um, you know, to the little, you know, the rudder board, whatever you call that on a surfboard, to something that you are deeply fascinated by as a bit of ecology?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, well, I I mean that changes as soon as you put your face underwater. And it it shocks me that so many surfers have never put on a mask and looked underwater from where they're sitting. And vice versa. There's so many divers that have never gone surfing. So when the ocean is, you know, murky, the divers are complaining. And when the ocean is flat, the surfers are complaining. But you could do both. You have the skill set. Um yeah, I started putting my face underwater and and just realizing how beautiful, how interesting, how inspiring the underwater world is. Um, and I grew up going to the beach, but I didn't really put on a mask and look underwater until until I was in grad school when I started, I met a few friends that were spear fishermen, and I started kind of tagging along with them and swimming out to the spots that they would go to in the Kelp Forest, and then just being like, wow, this is where I want to be spending my time.
SPEAKER_02Cool.
SPEAKER_05And with the camera, I had really a tool that let me explore it.
SPEAKER_01There's a dissatisfaction, maybe, and and I'm projecting a term here coming up, though, because you you have said, you know, at sort of around this time, you realized there were a million and a half beautiful, high-resolution, perfectly executed underwater images, but they didn't get at the feeling that you had um, you know, in your heart and soul. So, I mean, did you start off trying to do the standard high-res well-lit, you know, here's the pretty fish picture? Um, or did you immediately say, I've got to be going down a different avenue here?
SPEAKER_05Well, I was I had an Ikonos camera, so I wasn't gonna get the high-res perfectly lit fish picture period. There are people that managed to do that in the 70s and 80s, and I I do not understand how they did that with that tool, but I have a huge amount of respect for them. Um I knew that what I was interested in producing was more of a kind of an atmospheric image of the underwater landscape. But there are some images I made that I think are are interesting and kind of stand up to time. But um, so much of what the goal of a lot of underwater photographers is, is to get these images that while they're like when they're published and online or in print, they really pop and they draw you in and they're incredible, and they're so many colors and such detail. But when you're in the water, that's not what it looks like. It might look like that for a split second while your strobe goes off and all those colors come out, but your what your eyes take in underwater does not look like that, except for maybe on the like most perfect day in the tropics and you're only three feet deep. But in Southern California, the visibility can range from you know 10 feet to 50 feet at best. 50 feet is fantastic, and you really that becomes part of your experience of the place. And I wanted to embrace that and not fight against it with trying to produce the most perfect well-lit macro image. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You free dive more than you scuba dive. You your relationship to gear is highly technical, but also minimalist. And you are not technically, um the most of the time, an underwater photography. You're not pressing a shutter release or or capturing an image underwater. You're bringing the underwater to a different process. Yeah. So talk to me, you know, your relationship with apparatus is really what I'm asking here. Both you know, both photographic, but also, you know, the tank on your back or not.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. I think my relationship to apparatus comes from my background as a swimmer, that I I've always been really comfortable in the water and I like to move quickly in the water. You can't do that on scuba. You just can't. Um, you can't do that when you're dragging around a gigantic housing with strobes. And I kind of had a natural affinity once I started freediving, I it came pretty easily. Um, so I started scuba diving first, actually. Um, and I got trained as a scientific scuba diver. And for that, you get in the water with a tank, all your equipment, up like 26 pounds of lead, three or four different um tools clipped to your vest. You just enter the water like a rhinoceros. And while there are things that you can do in that equipment that you can't do otherwise, I don't enjoy that experience that much. Um, so once I yeah, so I like when I'm in the water, I like to have kind of as little with me as possible. And I do take a lot of photographs underwater still. I just don't really exhibit them or share them that frequently. Um, but I really enjoy diving with a camera. So I I do have a digital camera now with a housing, but it's kind of as as small as it can be.
SPEAKER_01Is that mostly for your own note-taking? Or is that a part of an artistic process too?
SPEAKER_05It's um it's mostly note-taking, yeah. Um, right now I'm working on a project where I'm trying to figure out how to incorporate some digital negatives into large-scale photogram work, but I haven't really sorted that out yet. Um, but it's primarily note-taking. Um and yeah, what I started doing in about 2018 was I started collecting specimens in the water. I started collecting seaweed and other things that I had found and bringing them back and making photograms. And I realized pretty quickly that this was a way to capture the the combination of scale and detail of the of the kelp specifically, that I was not able to do photographically underwater with a with a straight photograph. And I got really excited about that because these kelp forests, they grow a hundred feet tall, they're they're really physically impressive and also ecologically really the cornerstone of that ecosystem without the kelp there, everything else leaves. So I wanted to find a way to represent them that in a way that would communicate that importance to people. And to me, that was that combination of scale and detail. Like you draw them in with this amazing detail and texture and and form, and then the scale also communicates their their kind of standing.
SPEAKER_01Okay, I want to talk about scale in a little bit because I know you you you've got a bucket list project of a just a gargantuan um yeah cyanotype. Um we'll talk about that in a minute. Um, but okay, you you took accidentally a workshop on cyanotypes. Um yeah, kind of. But again, you know, okay, but you know, just like the thing at Princeton, you you wind up taking a course just sort of because, um, but another major change. So talk to me about this workshop and what about this kind of photogram uh, you know, lit up the world for you.
SPEAKER_05Um I'd always been interested in photograms. Even at Princeton, I was I was interested in I was making silver gelatin photograms in the dark room.
SPEAKER_01Um, but just kind of we should probably explain to people what what a photogram is.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So I think different people have different, like some people get really worked up about the specific definition of a photogram, but to me, it's any image that. You make with light-sensitive substrate, whether that's paper or fabric, and objects placed directly on top of that light-sensitive substrate. And then a light exposure. Mine are sun exposures. Um, but other people use, you know, light boxes or other ways to expose their photograms. But to me, it's that it's that contact of an object and light sensitive material being exposed without a camera. Okay.
SPEAKER_01And I mean, there are there are people doing all sorts of things without cameras right now. You know, in the dark room, they'll you know, light sparklers or something. Um, but so you you take this workshop.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I um yeah, it was uh it was it was seven dollars, I remember. And I had signed up because I was like, oh, well, it's seven dollars. If I don't go, it's no big deal. Um, it was at this uh gallery in Oceanside because I just like you know, it was on a Saturday, and like, what if the surf's good? I don't know, maybe I don't want to go. It was at this gallery and work in Oceanside called the Hill Street Country Club, and yeah, they taught you how to make cyanotypes, just very basic, with um with digital negatives. So they had you email in a photograph beforehand, and then they had printed the digital negative for you, and you learned how to coat your paper and make the print with the digital negative. And I had sent in a photo I'd taken underwater with the Nykonos camera in the kelp forest. And I wasn't that jazzed about the result. I was like, oh, okay, now this whole thing's blue, but okay. I kind of set it aside. I was like, okay, it was kind of interesting, but not. Yeah. Um and then I think within, you know, a couple weeks afterwards, I, you know, I would go out diving pretty regularly. And, you know, looking at the kelp in front of me, it was like, oh, I could just bring this in and try using this instead of the digital negative. Um, it's semi-transparent, it has interesting texture. Let's try it. I remembered something, you know, deep in my brain about Anna Atkins and early photo history. And it turned out great. So I kept doing it. And uh yeah, as soon as I realized that the most wonderful thing about cyanotype for me is that it's pretty limitless in terms of scale, as long as you can find giant paper and big spaces. So yeah, it pretty immediately became apparent that I could I could do this large-scale representation of this environment using this technique.
SPEAKER_01What about the technique though? I mean, you know, reached out to your heart and said, this is right, this is what I'm chasing.
SPEAKER_05Um, I think eliminating the camera had a lot to do with it. Um, the feeling that I was that I was interfering. I know it sounds weird and you can view it in different ways, but I I felt like I was interfering less with the organism in the making of the image. Um, I was letting the kelp make its own picture. Obviously, I was enabling it by getting it out of the water and making the cyanotype paper and arranging it. Um but it feels a bit more direct because of that contact and because of the life size scale of the resulting images, and that they're individuals and each you can't recreate one of those prints. I use the seaweed fresh, so I don't press and dry it. Um so really you can only make one print with one with one specimen, and then it's it's pretty toasted.
SPEAKER_01So I was gonna say every single every single one of your works is unique.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um it's not like you know, hit print how many copies? 300. Um, yeah, there is no such thing as a duplicate of any of your work other than maybe a photograph of it. Right. Um do you remember the do you remember the first time you brought a piece of kelp out and and you you know put it on the photo paper?
SPEAKER_05You know, I don't actually. I uh I don't. I know that I remember kind of the first few times, but I don't remember the first time.
SPEAKER_01I I remember Were they frustrating or successes?
SPEAKER_05They were exciting, they got a lot more refined as time went on, but even the first few were like, oh, I s this this is really interesting. I see potential here. And kelp is really it it's like begging to be used in this manner. It's because of the the transparency that it has, it just is fabulous for this technique.
SPEAKER_00Let's take just a quick break. We hope very much that you're enjoying today's episode. The very fact that you are listening to this podcast suggests that photography means a lot to you. And if that's the case, you might want to have a look at Frames Quarterly Printed Photography magazine. We truly believe that excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit readframes.com to find out more about our publication and use the coupon code podcast to receive a recurring 10% discount on your new Frames magazine subscription. And now back to today's conversation.
SPEAKER_01There are three basic types around Catalina: the giant kelp, the bladder, and the southern seapalm. Are they different for you?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, they're all they're all different. Catalina, the kelp forests are primarily composed of giant kelp. That's what makes the kind of habitat and the structure. And then there's really there's like hundreds of species in the understory. And I am super biased and I work with giant kelp the most, but I have made a concerted effort to kind of create a portrait of biodiversity of what's underwater and and learn how the different species of seaweed image themselves. Some work better than others, um, just in terms of creating an image that represents the morphology of that species. And that has to do with shape and and density, mostly. There's some species that are very dense and the light does not pass through their tissue. Um, and so they just kind of come out as a blob. So those are not as exciting. But they're also, you know, in the effort of representing or and documenting what's underwater, they're important. They're part of the, they're part of what's there.
SPEAKER_01You you have talked elsewhere about um, I don't know if you use this turnout, but sort of pre-visualizing what you're when you go diving, you know what you're looking for. Are you, you know, hunting a specific species because you know that it's gonna, you know, work well for your imaging? Or are you swimming around thinking, oh, that looks cool? Um how do you go about, especially since you're doing a lot of this, you know, just on one breath at a time, how do you go collect your material?
SPEAKER_05Sometimes I know what I'm looking for if I am working on a specific project or you know, I'm making an exhibit and I know I'm I have a plan. Um, other times I'm more looking for kind of something of a certain size. I will generally prepare my paper or fabric that I plan to print on the night the night before, and then so that it's dry and ready when I get back home with um with all the material after diving. So I have in my head, like, oh, I made three pieces of 22 by 30 paper, and then I have one six-foot-long piece of fabric. So let's look for something that will take up that substrate essentially. And other times, like when I was working on the exhibit that's now at the Catalina Museum, I had a plan. I I was making 10 12-foot-long panels. I wanted them to be the majority of them giant kelp, and I wanted some of them to represent the other species that are around. So um, in that case, I was just looking for, you know, 12-foot-long stretches of giant kelp that are in good shape that looked like they weren't missing a lot of leaves. Um, that looked like they'd be, you know, nice representatives for what I was trying to do. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now you got to fill me in on my ignorance of the process here a little bit, because there there's at least, you know, 15 stages I don't understand if I'm gonna be honest. But you coat the paper um, you know, the night before you let it dry. Um, you go out to the beach, you go swimming, you bring back the you know, the kelp, you you lay it on the photosensitive paper that's already been pre-treated. But you're do you're not doing this in a dark room. And and does really the difference between shade and direct sunlight, that's what I mean, is that all that kicks in the process here?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I mean, you want to keep your treated paper as dark as possible before you use it. Um, but it does have a pretty wide tolerance. So if I'm working in the field, like I was in Catalina, um, I'll set up with as much shade as I can find uh in order to like lay out the composition and then pull it out into direct sunlight and let the exposure begin. But even as I'm laying out a composition in in the shade, you can see the paper starting to react. And so there's an element of urgency there that you're you're hurrying because you you know that the faster you do this, the better contrast your print will have.
SPEAKER_01From blank canvas to an organized composition, how long do you normally have?
SPEAKER_05It yeah, it depends what kind of shade you're in. If you're in the garage with the lights off, you got as long as you want.
SPEAKER_01Um you got a you got somebody holding a blanket over it at the back of the station wagon.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, maybe three minutes. Okay.
SPEAKER_01And then it exposes for how long?
SPEAKER_05Uh it depends on the UV index um and how you know how where you are in the world and what what season it is. But um, generally between 10 and 20 minutes in the sun, um, the longest exposures I've ever done are 45 minutes. But that was not terribly successful.
SPEAKER_01You know, you know, how you know how master bakers just can feel humidity and adjust their recipes, you know, you know, based on um the moisture in the air. It seems that you have to have that same kind of environmental awareness of cloudy, sunny, UV index, humidity, all that kind of stuff when you're doing this. Is that right?
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Um, and you just you kind of learn through trial and error, um, and you learn how different papers and different fabrics look when they're fully exposed. And that can vary a lot depending on on the substrate that you're working with. Um, so it's hard to say like, look for this specific shade, and then you're you're done. But yeah, it's a it's a lot of practice. I do use the there's a in the weather app on on my phone, there's a UV index, um, which is helpful to kind of get a a baseline uh of what you're working with. But yeah, every day is different, and and it depends on, again, the paper or the fabric that you're using as well.
SPEAKER_01Then you rinse it immediately, fresh or salt water, and you're done?
SPEAKER_05Right. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01This is one of these things that that at one level you think, oh, I can do that. And then you realize there's no bloody way I'm gonna be able to do that.
SPEAKER_04Uh I mean, at a small scale, it's pretty manageable. And a lot as soon as you start growing them, they they get more complicated.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so so tell me a story of a day when everything just went beautifully.
SPEAKER_05I mean, there's there's been lots of those days. I um you you get up in the morning and you go diving, and you got your your friends with you, and it's clear and beautiful in the water, and you find the kelp quickly, and um you find something interesting, and uh the sun stays out, the marine layer doesn't blow in uh by the time you get out of the water. Um and you you pull, you know, four or five beautiful prints in an afternoon. But then there's also days where you get in the water and it's super murky and the kelp forest is you know hard to find, or it's the current's really strong, and so it's kind of laying on the bottom and hard to access. And then by the time you get out of the water, the marine layers come in and it's super foggy and wet, and you just can't make your exposures. So that's the flip side of the coin. Um, and there's also the what the kelp forest has been going through over the past decade has uh has been interesting to watch um in real time. I didn't realize that when I first started free diving in 2013, that that was kind of a peak of um the density and and coverage of the kelp forest in Southern California. Um, and some environmental kind of a series of events started happening in 2014 that significantly changed that. And it it has not recovered to that to the extent that it was in 2013 and prior since then. Um, so that's something that I I saw happen as I was becoming more comfortable and and more familiar with those forests.
SPEAKER_01Is is diving in the kelp forest dangerous? Because the two images I've got are either the National Geographic video where everything's swaying back and forth beautifully, or some spy movie where the bad guy gets tangled up and and doesn't you know come up. Um is it you know, is it a dangerous occupation?
SPEAKER_05I mean, I think anytime you get in the ocean or you go out into nature, there is an element of risk that you have to be willing to accept. Um and learning to assess that risk is really important. Learning to know when when to say no, when to not go out is really important. But you know, if you're careful, if you're aware, if you're well trained, I don't think it's an inherently dangerous thing to do.
SPEAKER_01A lot of people have made a big deal out of placing you in a history uh with Adkins, with Megan Ripinoff, with others of scripts. Um, do you see yourself in a kind of timeline?
SPEAKER_05I like to think of myself as kind of extending that tradition. I really think of what I do as both scientific documentation and artistic work, um, and kind of finding that that middle ground of something that can serve as a record and as you know, as art does as an inspiration. So that's something that Anna Atkins really, you know, kicked off the history of cyanotype with. Um, she was interestingly kind of she was making copies. She wants, she what she wanted out of cyanotype was to make copies. Um and so she was pressing her seaweeds um in order to make multiple images of the same organism. Whereas prior, you would have had to press and you know, just keep that one organism, one page, one pressing, and making the first book of images in that way. Um But I think that that desire to record and document scientifically, but also present present that information in a way that is really inspiring to people. Yes, I hope that I I fit into that tradition.
SPEAKER_01You know, when you talk about making copies, um, I have to chuckle because I I I feel your inspiration and and your pain for 900 individual sardines. So so okay, tell me about the Blue Forest. Tell me about um, you know, it this is an immersive experience. It it is gorgeous. There are several pictures of the exhibition uh up online, but what walk me through that installation from initial, hey kids, we can do this, to 900 individual sardines.
SPEAKER_05Um yeah, so they were not part of the plan initially, really, at all.
SPEAKER_02Oh, great.
SPEAKER_05But yeah, I uh I had the opportunity to um get to know the director of the Catalina Museum, and she invited me to come see the space. And they have this gallery upstairs in the museum that is kind of like a it's like a chapel. It's it's an octagonal room. Okay. It has a skylight in the middle. Um, it's kind of separate from the rest of the space. And it immediately was like, yes, this is this is the place that I can make this exhibit in. And because I could see that it was, I could create something that would be similar to the feeling that I have when I'm swimming through the kelp forest and you kind of come into a clearing, and there's so much light in the center, and you kind of surface through the center of that. And so I knew I wanted to create a series of cyanotypes on silk panels that you could kind of enter and feel the scale of the kelp around you. And so I did that. I made those, I spent 10 days in Catalina in 2024, and I made those, I made the 10 panels, and then I was thinking about what to put on the walls, because none of that was going to go on the walls, the walls were just still empty. Um, and I had initially thought I would use that for kind of didactic information and maybe a couple works on paper that would be tighter and more composed and maybe represent a couple different species. But then I got to thinking about some of the experiences that I'd had diving in Catalina, and one that really has stuck with me is being enveloped in schools of small bait fish like sardines and anchovies, and kind of swirling through the kelp forest with those schools of fish. So obviously, I had to create a school of sardines. Um, but I really didn't um come to this conclusion until about maybe six weeks before the show was supposed to open. And uh I think I I think I gave the director of the museum a little bit of a panic attack when she first heard about it. She called me. She was like, What is this a year about sardines you want to blue on the wall?
SPEAKER_01Um but you didn't just get a stencil and some blue paint.
SPEAKER_05No, no, because obviously they had to be, they had to feel like they were a real school. And um so I photographed 18 sardines that I got from the fish market in different angles and positions, and then I made digital negatives out of those photographs, and then I made 900 cyanotype prints that I cut out. Yeah, and then I individually glued them to the wall.
SPEAKER_01Uh you you describe it as being meditative, and I thought, okay, you know that's not the word I would have used, but okay. Um But what what I find amazing here though, um, because you did was this the exhibit you used sound for as well? Yes. Okay. I I didn't I didn't remember if it was that or forest bathing, but talk to me about your, I mean, with your work, how do you imagine it when it comes to the audience? Because you you've talked a lot about um how you want people to respond to your work. And you really do take your work um as an immersive experience. So, okay, talk to me about imagining somebody walking in for the first time. How do you for how do you imagine that person walking in to encounter your work?
SPEAKER_05Um I think it's easier for me to describe how I feel when I enter the kelp forest. And I that's that's my goal and what I want to communicate. Whether or not that's always successful, I don't know. But I I feel calm and I feel it's like a combination of calm and excited and very present in a way that is hard to access for me elsewhere. Very aware, kind of like a a sponge and kind of ready to receive whatever is is there that day. Um so for the Blue Forest exhibit in Catalina specifically, that that room, when you enter it, um, the door closes behind you, and if there's no sound, you just hear yourself. And I felt that that would take people out of the experience that I want that I was hoping to create. So I wanted I knew I wanted to have some kind of sound element in there, and so I started recording underwater. Um, I got this little underwater uh hydrophone, and I started clipping. It onto the bottom of the stands of kelp when I was diving around. I would just clip it there and then come back 20 minutes later and get it. And so I had all these recordings that weren't that exciting, but they are it's kind of like white noise in a way. But people think it's quiet underwater. A lot of people think it's silent, and it's not. It's it's there's always noises going on. And so I wanted to communicate that as well that um that it's not this, you know, float bath kind of silence. Um it's a it's an active, dynamic environment, both visually and and sonically.
SPEAKER_01And and that is a wonderful argument for free diving too, because when I I I've free diving, I've swum to the bottom of a pool. Um, but when I've had a tank on my back, all you hear are the bubbles and you know your regulator and stuff like that. So that's um, I would imagine it's been or it is a substantially and profoundly different audio experience to be diving that way.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. Yeah. And when you're on the surface, you hear yourself breathing, but as soon as you drop underwater, that's that stops, obviously. So you hear everything around you a lot better.
SPEAKER_01Um, how is the current exhibit different from the forest bathing exhibit you did a while back?
SPEAKER_05Um, well, the current exhibit is actually kind of closest to the the holdfast exhibit I had done with the birch aquarium, um, in that it's uh it has the hanging panels of of kelp. But the that show at the birch aquarium was um was really intended for high levels of physical engagement. At the they get you know, thousands of kids going through there a day. So um we had some limitations on how we could design that. It needed to be safe for you know thousands of middle schoolers uh and below. So what we did was um digitize the original cyanotypes at scale and then reprint them on silk. So they are, I made 10 and there were 27 panels in the show. So um there were some reproductions in that, in that exhibit, and and they were not originals that were displayed. They were these digital prints on silk, and they were displayed in a way that if a kid decided they wanted to climb the forest, um, it would fall down so that they couldn't um, you know, they couldn't climb it. Um at the Catalina Museum, we didn't face those restraints um because it's a much more kind of traditional art space. And so I was able to create the, you know, create and display the original work and um and do it in a way that felt a lot lighter than the execution at the Burge Aquarium.
SPEAKER_01You're bringing up a memory. Um, in Wellington, New Zealand, there is or used to be uh an exhibit um of a Landsat satellite picture of New Zealand. And it was in the floor and it was backlit. It was beautiful. Um, but you walked on it. And when the middle schoolers or the elementary kids would come in, they all instantly turned into Godzilla. You know, they'd be stomping on all over. Okay. I I I have not not thought about that risk before.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, at the aquarium, I the first time I saw the middle schoolers come through, I was like, oh my gosh, this is uh this is sea lion energy in here. They're just flying through through there.
SPEAKER_01I love it. You you I there we you have a dream for a cyano tap that is what 100 foot long, something like that? Tell me about the this sort of bucket list thing that you want to do. And is that even possible?
SPEAKER_05I don't know why it wouldn't be possible. The kelp grows to 100, 150 feet tall. And I mean, I could just do it.
SPEAKER_01Would you want this to be one actual you know, tree, you know, piece of kelp, or are we talking segments gathered at different times?
SPEAKER_05No, it's got to be one thing. Um, yeah, so I yeah, I just want to make a portrait of a full individual, and that's um, you know, they're very big.
SPEAKER_01So you've got a 150-foot-long sheet of paper sitting on the beach in the shade, and you've got three minutes to lay it out?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I would need some help.
SPEAKER_01It would be stunningly beautiful though.
SPEAKER_05It'd be pretty cool, yeah.
SPEAKER_01What about scale do you think with that idea? What about scale is important?
SPEAKER_05I think most people don't realize how how large these things are, and and it's their scale that really makes them makes it possible for them to create the habitat where everything else resides in that area. So being able to bring that scale out of the water and get somebody standing next to it and and viscerally understanding how much bigger these things are than they are, um, and putting them, you know, in the scale of a terrestrial forest, which they are, I think, you know, deep down communicate something to people that you don't it's is hard to do in words. And it creates an emotional reaction that is hard to do with a scientific paper.
SPEAKER_01Would you be happy if this was displayed horizontally or would you want it displayed vertically?
SPEAKER_05I hadn't actually thought about it. I always just assumed it would be horizontal or I that it would be vertical. Um the biggest ones I've done are 17 feet long. Um and they are installed vertically and and yeah, people, you know, measure themselves up next to them and look up at them. And yeah, even just at that scale, I I think it it communicates some of that, but having a full, a full individual would would really be very cool.
SPEAKER_01You have been to one of the places I've not been and I can't wait to get to, uh, and that's Antarctica. You've got sort of standard, you know, nature photography from there as well, but you also talk about you know rinsing your prints in your cabin shower. You talk about you know specimens laid out on a the deck of a boat. I mean, we're were you you weren't freediving in Antarctica, were you?
SPEAKER_05No, I wanted to so badly, but I did not, I was not allowed to.
SPEAKER_01Um so tell me what you brought up. Tell me what you did.
SPEAKER_05Uh that was kind of uh just an amazing coincidence uh that I I my boss got invited to go and she couldn't go, so I went. And uh so I was I was there uh you know, ostensibly to do a different job, but I you know, I brought my camera and I it was really early on in me making learning how to make cyanotypes. So I I brought some paper because I was excited about it, and uh I learned a lot of things. I learned about exposing in snow, I learned about um, you know, how much longer it takes uh with that, you know, the difference in UV from Southern California to Antarctica. But it was really a wonderful time of just experimenting and because I was so new to the process. Um I'd really only been working with it for maybe six months. Yeah, I mean, Antarctica is incredible. I I hope to have the opportunity to go back someday.
SPEAKER_01Is that the strangest place you've done work? By strange, I mean you know, most unlike Southern California.
SPEAKER_05Um, probably, yeah.
SPEAKER_01The reason I ask is you've made a point of the fact that where you live has been documented extensively a lot, and you find that actually as an attribute, that the fact that you're going back to the same place, that you're becoming familiar, the local knowledge aspect of it, you don't see as something to overcome, you see it as something to celebrate.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. I mean, I love to travel, but I am always aware that that it's very important to know, to learn over time about your environment. Um, and and that you can only learn about your environment in that way with repeated exposure over and over and over again to the same areas and seeing them in all kinds of different conditions. Um, so I've been spending more time. Um, I got to spend two and a half months on the Oregon coast last year, and I've been spending some time in Northern California this year. And um while it's really exciting to explore new places, I'm very kind of cautious in as I learn what these places are like, um, because they're so different. And because I, you know, it's a it's a situation of um you know enough to know that you don't know.
SPEAKER_01Know how much you don't know, yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. One of one of those situations. Um you you only know enough to be dangerous to yourself. And and I think the way to overcome that is is is time um and dedication to observing the same places.
SPEAKER_01When are you going out next?
SPEAKER_05My friend wanted me to go right after this, but I I kind of have a lot of stuff to do today. Um, so we'll see.
SPEAKER_04But if not today, I'm sure I'm planning to go on Thursday.
SPEAKER_01So well, I am a fan. This is absolutely beautiful, heart, heart-grabbing work um that has both scientific gravitas and emotional merit. I have enjoyed this conversation immensely. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_05Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Frames. Because excellent photography belongs on paper. Visit us at www.readframes.com. That's readframes.com.