These rooted bodies

: Photographic encounters with plant intelligence and the English oak tree through material, theory and practice

Abstract

In the last ten years, a growth of interest in plant intelligence in the humanities has aligned with what Giovanni Aloi and Michael Marder (2023) have termed art’s “vegetal turn”. This approach seeks to decentre the historically hierarchical relationship between humans and the natural world by considering the plant beyond representation, positioning it as an agent within creative practice. Drawing on these contexts and theories of the photographic index, this thesis argues that creative practice can offer new ways of embedding plants in photographic processes.
To do this, the thesis takes the English oak tree as a case study, exploring its cultural, social and political histories through a mixture of traditional, experimental and alternative photographic methodologies. These variously incorporate parts of the oak tree’s material in photographic processes and use its biological functions as inspiration to make photographic images. Alongside, the thesis considers the oak’s historical connections to the origins of photography to question how new notions of plant intelligence might reframe the place of the tree in contemporary photographic practice.
To structure the enquiry, the practice-based research is split into three projects: each approaching the oak tree from different yet overlapping perspectives. In Arboreal Encounters, a series of tannin-toned cyanotypes, I work with six heritage oak trees across England, examining their individual histories, while also exploring tannin as ahistorical substance and contemporary toner for cyanotype prints. Organic Impression continues the use of plant material to make photographs, producing a series of Chthonotypes and Rhizotypes (prints made with soil and roots) to visualise unseen aspects of the oak tree’s material existence. Lastly, in Perceiving Phytochrome, I take inspiration from the photoreceptor “phytochrome”, a leaf protein which allow trees to perceive light on the far-red spectrum to determine leaf growth and proximity to other trees. The resulting images use slow shutter speeds and infrared film to imagine how oak trees might apprehend their surroundings.
The written thesis is arranged into chapters that mirror the physiognomy of the oak tree from the ground up. Root analyses photographers and photographic artists who have made work around trees and plants to examine creative methods and identify gaps in knowledge. Trunk covers my practice-based research, explaining its methods, inspirations and relationship to theory. While Crown explores the meanings and criticisms of plant intelligence and plant blindness and their implications for creative practice that aims to bridge the philosophical distance between plants and humans. These aims are then set in relation to plant-based photographs and their relation to the photographic index, examining how such photographs come to embody, not just refer, to their subject. The conclusion reflects on my original contribution to knowledge, examining how cultural histories of trees, vegetal art practices and philosophies of plant intelligence can work together to re-centre the oak tree in photographic methods of representation, while reflecting on the work’s broader potential to operate as a template for new artistic, philosophical and material encounters with plants.

Date of Award	Apr 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Brighton
Supervisor	Annebella Pollen (Supervisor) & Xavier Ribas (Supervisor)