Grass portraits: Ackroyd & Harvey on creating photographic photosynthesis
‘Without plants photosynthesising we wouldn’t have the atmosphere on this planet… we wouldn’t have life the way we know it’
As part of the 2023 Hayward Gallery exhibition Dear Earth, artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey created a series of living portraits through what they call photographic photosynthesis.
The individuals depicted – Love Ssega, Destiny Boka Batesa, Helene Schulze, Julian Lahai-Taylor and Paul Powesland – are each part of London-based climate conscious collectives, and in this video Ackroyd & Harvey explain how these living portraits are constructed and grown in a darkroom through the use of controlled light.
‘It’s sort of perverse, you start by having to nurture the work, and then you put the whole process into reverse and kill it’
Dan Harvey
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