Aaron Rose

Somewhere between pinhole photography and medieval alchemy, photographer Aaron Rose thinks of his own imagery as "photography in its purest phase." This phase is "the 150 years in which photographic art arose from the artist's interaction with the visible universe, through the medium of light."
In the process of documenting cities, stars, landscapes, crystals, etc., Rose "has gradually mastered special chemical processes that lend subtle and surprising hues to the final print. Even though he uses standard Tri-X black-and-white film, elements such as mercury and gold added to the developing solution produce rust or orange or shell-pink tones in some of the works."


The images quickly cross over into fascinating philosophical terrain, especially with Rose's botanical studies: "Heliotropic foliage in these works may remind us of the light-sensitive paper used in photography," because "plant photosynthesis involves chemical processes analogous to those used to develop a print."
In a monograph dedicated to his work, Rose casually mentions the fact that sunlight – and starlight – ultraviolet radiation – constantly bombards the surface of the earth and interacts chemically with everything from skin to leaves to certain types of metal – which means that millions upon millions of photographs are being developed, at all scale levels, on the surface of the earth, everywhere, lasting just long enough that they can fade, unnoticed.


[For similar such thoughts, click here].