Catriona Leahy: Nature's Own Darkroom

Nature’s Own Darkroom is a body of work emerging from Catriona Leahy’s ongoing research into the degraded peatlands in the midlands of Ireland as a result of industrial extraction. The exhibition draws on the relationship between bog and photographic darkroom to speak of the hidden yet precarious state within which both bog and image are held. In its pristine condition, the bog can be thought of as a natural darkroom, with powers similar to those of photography. Just as the photographic negative is kept safe in a latent state within the black box of a camera, so too does the bog remain preserved against time’s relentless march until it is exposed and, in the process, undergoes an irreversible transformation.

Influenced by this relationship, Leahy uses experimental analogue photography, drawing and installation to call attention to the latent yet enduring effects of human intervention on the landscape. With no possibility for return to the original, she cuts, collages and intervenes in her photographic negatives to abstract and reassemble fragmented landscapes. Like the bog, the collaged negatives are composed of layers; they contain sediments and deposits as well as residues of her finger prints. Her process, akin to the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel as it punctures the skin, resonates with the wounds inflicted on the landscape through extraction. Such parallels invite an uncomfortable association between the body, the vulnerability of skin, and our damaged Earth. Once exposed, the resulting works reveal the scars of her interventions.

While on one hand Leahy aims to underscore this slow violence inflicted on the landscape, her sensitive handling of material suggests a practice that invokes care. As we face the realities of ecological collapse, how might we collectively tend to our ailing Earth, to suture the wounds and allow time to heal?