Artist statement: This series records plants and their medicinal properties from the Siwai region of Bougainville Island, addressing the local concern for the loss of traditional knowledge through light, time, and material and digital traces. The photographs utilise the lumen process on location at Kainake Village, where the community was invited to contribute their knowledge to the composition of the prints. The process uses black-and-white paper in a camera-less method, which reacts to environmental elements such as sunlight and plant extractions. The lumen prints are transformed using a flatbed scanner process to capture the medicinal plants in an abstracted and fragmented way, emphasising the need for equilibrium between traditional and modern knowledge spaces in an increasingly modernised and globalised community.
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Also known as Giclee prints or bubble-jet prints, pigment ink-jet prints are generated by computer printers from digital or scanned files using dye-based or pigment-based inks. A series of nozzles spray tiny droplets of ink onto the paper surface in a precise pattern that corresponds to the digital image file. In dye-based prints the ink soaks into the paper, whereas in pigment-based prints the ink rests and dries on top of the paper surface.
Whilst the term is broad, pigment ink-jet prints have come to be associated with prints produced on fine art papers. They are the most versatile and archival method of printing available to photographers today. A wide variety of material on which an image can be printed with such inks are available, including various textures and finishes such as matte photo paper, watercolour paper, cotton canvas or pre-coated canvas.
