Photosynthetic art from Heather Ackroyd Bashny.Net

British creative married Duo Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey already not the first year working with the usual lawn grass, and natural photosynthesis. That's just they create with the Prim English lawns and unique living portraits. For more than a decade artists regularly manage to amaze the world with his large-scale grass installations. At the Wimbledon tennis tournament 2008, they introduced the green photo-portraits of herbs known tennis players, recently made covered with grass walls of London's Dilston Grove Gallery and here again the new impressive collection of green creatures under the eloquent title "Face to Face".

This time the work presented in Chamarande castle (Chateau de Chamarande), France. On canvases – portraits of the workers cultural center, the Domaine de Chamarande.





To juicy green grass, in the good sense of each word, a creative couple addicted for a long time, but the idea is to use it as such an unusual creative medium was born by accident. One day, after finishing work on the installation in the form of a living wall of grass, they forgot the wall the ladder. When after some time the ladder was removed, everyone saw the step "print" on the wall. Without thinking Heather and Dan realized that the reason for all – photosynthesis, and the intensity of pigmentation of the grass depends on the number Papademos her light. After a series of experiments that were designed to help artists to delve deeper into the intricacies of natural photosynthesis and to make the process more controlled, they stopped on the way to "print" on the grass of live images by projection on a green canvas turf black-and-white negatives. Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey are not the only artists who are fond of photosynthetic art. Something like that creates and American photographer Binh Danh, who with the help of chlorophyll prints on leaves of plants.





Why is the grass green? We all know the answer to this question since school biology lessons. Or don't know?! Because it has a lot of chlorophyll, which absorbs red and blue light spectrum and reflects green. To develop the chlorophyll of plants using solar energy, absorb carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere and emit oxygen. The more light falls on the grass, so it is greener. In poorly lit areas, it becomes light green or yellow in color. To canvas on the grass-the lawn manifested the image requires a little more than a week, provided that the black-and-white negative will be projected on a green leaf every day for 12 hours. However, to fully predict the end result when dealing with living material and by the very Mother Nature, virtually impossible. Nature is always inevitably becomes a co-author, make your corrections and remarks.

After developing, the image requires special conditions and special care. This is due to the fact that it continues to live and under direct sunlight the grass begins to grow rapidly, pigmentation changes, gradually altering the image and making it "disappear".





The scale of living creatures and all specifics of the works can only be felt in the spacious exhibition hall. Close to every blade of grass – only "pixel in a digital image". To see the portrait, you can only from a distance. Yellow-green gamma subconsciously associated with old faded photographs, giving the image a special poignancy, fragility and delicacy.





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