Well it has been workshops galore of late ! And why not? Photography and techniques should be out there amongst the people and not just lurking online.
Working with Suffolk Wildlife Trust was an absolute pleasure. Along with SmellSense Charity I created a series of walks and cyanotype sessions responding to the unique landscape of the Carlton Marshes.
I also an enjoyed running a smartphone workshop for a legal firm in the City. They learned several tips and tricks, and hopefully I improved their awareness of ‘light’ and how their phones respond to it.
Big news, and just out, is my long-awaited Eco Photography Summer School!
Taking place across two green oases in South East London – we will be having lots of fun experimenting with sustainable photography processes! Various types of cyanotype and botanical toners, Anthotypes, prints on fabric and more! If you want to use digital negatives (probably the final session) contact me to arrange. Suitable for beginners to advanced.
I’ve always been interested in the overlap between the senses – sight, hearing, smell… . Many years ago I wrote a dissertation about Synaesthesia in Theatre and TV. I knew as a director that if you bombard the eyes with red for example, you will get a visceral response from your audience. I’ve always believed there are subliminal connections between for example colour and sound. For me a Middle C note is royal blue and always has been. After all, light and sound are just different types of waves, and colours and pitches are different frequencies.
Rosemary cyanotypes
When I work with ultraviolet light in my cyanotype printing I am very aware that the optimal frequency is 365nm. I can see the effects of sun, and all manner of clouds of the final print – I work with the weather to get the precise results I am after … I can control contrast and colour by harnessing the elements in the same way a farmer does to maximise his yield. This week I have noticed that my freckles start forming when UV breaches a certain point, I can literally feel them forming on my skin – no need for a light meter!
Pic of my mozzie bite and freckles
And that brings me to the connection between Earth, Body and Spirit, one that I fear we are losing in today’s concrete jungles. I’ve worked with city kids who have never touched a growing plant and don’t know where supermarket veg comes from beyond the plastic tray. When I lost my senses of smell and taste for years after Covid, the world felt a very 2-dimensional place. I felt detached, like I was living in a simulation of reality, a character in a computer game. When my senses returned I felt euphoric, and determined to never take these senses for granted again. I found out about the charity Fifth Sense who help people with smell/taste disorders and I did their training and now volunteer for them, to help raise awareness.
On the day that my sense of smell returned I happened to be picking rosemary at the John Evelyn Garden in Deptford. So this is where we are running an informal workshop on Fri 16 May 2025 2.30-4pm. Suitable for anyone wanting to explore the senses and nature, and to get hands-on with plants and make a cyanotype print with sunlight. We will be continuing the discussions of sensory perception then. Details on how to book a free place here
I’ve been studying the recent record temperatures of oceans, and all the implications. The extinction of species, the new species found in the deeps and immediately threatened by deep sea mining. Those creatures look otherworldly, and unbelievable.
These thoughts put surreal images into my head, and from there into Cyanotypes. Exhibition “Deep Trouble” opens next week, in the friendly gallery at Woolwich Front Room in the town centre.
I’m going to bed tonight thinking what I can do with a photo I took of a stingray. Those things have human-like faces!
Heads up to my blog readers, that there will be a workshop (in Cyanotype and Anthotype) with booking opening at 10pm on 1st Aug. Book here
Also I’m there to chat to people about my work on Friday, come and say hi.
2023 has got off to a bright start! I’ve been working on the Light The Way Festival for Hive Curates. I’ve run workshops with local residents – we’ve been on Nature walks along the Ridgeway, the Orchard, and the canals in Thamesmead. Then we made cyanotypes which will be scanned and incorporated into the “Nature Through A New Lens” installation.
I’m also presenting my own piece “Dark Path”. This is a recycled version of my previous “Dark Alley” work, with updates made to the vandalised boxes, and some faces from the workshops featured in my unique lightcrates. I think I did pretty well snapping the participants during our tea break. I love the site I’ve been allocated on the Ridgeway, and I am scattering the boxes there so that they are more site specific. As you can see from the header picture it is currently drenched in blossom. I hope to involve some plants and UV lights too! Its been quite intense work – lots of late night soldering and splinters.
Winter can be such a depressing month, especially the cold dark days in London. I am delighted to take part in “Light the Way”, getting people out in Nature for a long walk, its the best medicine! Light festivals seem to replacing things like Bonfire Nights, we really need safe outdoor events so people can socialise.
Similarly, I have been helping out with Pepys Warm Welcomes in Deptford. I had to drink a lot of wine (kidding) to provide enough bottles for people to recycle into lamps with me! The lamps came out so well. Its a great idea to get people in one centre to save money on their own heating bills. So many wins for the environment all round! Next week I’ll be running a casual “painting to music” session, and Paul and I will be performing some of my songs unplugged !
2022 got off to a good start, as I won a commission in a design competition for Woolwich. I responded to a brief to make something for Myrtle Alley that explored women’s safety at night. It’s funny because I was expecting to be making something about the history of Woolwich, the old and the new, which really intrigues me. But, I was always avoiding this particular alley after dark, even if it was only 4pm, and I had never given that a second thought to that until this brief came along. Why should I have to avoid this convenient shortcut? I wondered if other women also avoided it.
At the same time Greenwich Council launched a map where women could drop a pin at areas where they felt unsafe. You can fill in the survey and make suggestions to spend money on lighting, cameras, etc … but it finally dawned on me that it wasn’t the “space” itself that was unsafe, it was the predators that might lurk in the dark corners that make it unsafe, and no amount of cameras and lighting will get at that root cause.
At the same time Greenwich Council launched a map where women could drop a pin at areas where they felt unsafe. You can fill in the survey and make suggestions to spend money on lighting, cameras, etc … but it finally dawned on me that this wasn’t addressing the root cause of the violence, and we will be still walking around scared, because there will always be some dark corners left.
My idea for “Dark Alley” just came popped straight out of my head, like all the best ideas do. I would photograph women passing by and ask them what they thought of the alley and take a photo of them. I’d been working with boxes a lot in 2021, there was Deptford Xwhere I painted on cardboard boxes, and the commission for London Alternative Photography where I cyanotyped the inside of a Ilford paper box. This time I wanted to use the wooden crates that I would sometimes see discarded in the street, and around the market stalls.
I wanted to light up the alley, so it wasn’t so dark and scary, and so it stopped to make people think. I decided to put lights inside the photo boxes.
Of course when you make a pie-in-the-sky design like this, you never dream that you will win and end up making it ! So here I am today on the 5th day of sawing, glueing and assembling those crate ‘frames”, splinters in my fingers, solder burns from the wiring …. it was not as easy as it looks ! Let alone making transparent sunprints in January from fast street portraits.
The hardest part was that I had photographed about 12 women and had to narrow it down to only 6 for the final installation. But I will be posting each of the women a nice print. I am so pleased by my own bravery with street photography that I might continue this into a larger project – the light , the people , and the changing architecture are very special in Woolwich. I have known the place for 30yrs and when I compare my memories , with the post-pandemic town, there is a massive difference that I learn so much from, you can see how the future might go.
I am really proud that I’ve used mostly recycled materials. Including some red drapes which I made from netting from a building site. The fronds will drape down and tickle you as you go through the alley – a bit like the ghost train at the fairground. I remember feeling so scared when I was a kid on the Ghost Train, and its exactly the same feeling I get when I reach the bend of this dark alley. Fear is funny thing, you imagine the worst things that can happen, the adrenaline comes, and then when you exit the alleyway you breathe a sigh of relief. You were one of the lucky ones.
Its been great having the support of Resolve Collective and Lison, who have been working really hard getting everything ready for the opening this Saturday 12th Feb. There is another prizewinner Evie painting silhouettes onto the alley walls – so we will certainly be brightening up this neglected space that the locals call “piss alley”.
I am really grateful for this opportunity to have made something site-specific and sculptural – it certainly stretched me out of my comfort zones. I am proud of what I am creating.
On Saturday 12 Feb the organisers are leading a tour around the artworks dotted about Woolwich town centre. I will be there. There are 2 further walks on Sunday, I am not sure if I will be at those, but contact me if you are going and I will do my best.
The following Friday I am doing a photo walk around Woolwich – mainly for film shooters, but anyone is welcome, I will take you past some of the artworks then too.
Since Lockdown work has been like buses, nothing for ages and then 3 projects at once. I always love Deptford X Festival as it interacts with my local community, but it was a lot of work this year because all work had to be outdoors. Artists had to find their own outdoor spaces, and I was walking down Deptford High Street in the pouring rain one day, and knocked on the door of a new bar (many places were still closed at this stage of lockdown). The venue (Badger Badger) were very hospitable and have allowed me to hang my work outside , and in the windows, and on the roof !
Now more than ever I see the value of physical art in a physical space like a street, and one that isn’t just a ticketed ‘art prison’.
My “Day 59” exhibition includes images from my Lockdown Diary in Cyanotype (book still in production!) and more responses to my thoughts on historic plagues. My work will come down at about 10pm on Sunday 18th July.
The opening event I held was online due to restrictions but it was quite a happening ! I gave a talk and demo but I then wanted to discuss pandemics in general , and we looked at the historic Plague Doctor. Having engaged the services of actor Ian Crosson, I was able to get a real Plague Doctor to join the Zoom and read my script that was based on my historic and scientific research.
I have my 1st in-person Cyanotype Workshop of the year planned on Friday 23rd July in Woolwich. Only £15 and a great opportunity to make some lovely blueprints in the midday sunlight. I am also planning a Process-A-Film Workshop for Fri 13 August – I am not sure if there will be interest in that but it can certainly save you a lot of money in the lab !
The other new project I am working on involves more mermaids – watch this space !
I had the urge to look closely at light today. Photons (particles of light) are the main ingredient of photography. It is mind-boggling that the quantum particles can exist in 2 places at once. I do a lot of reading on this subject. One possible explanation is that the particle in question is existing in both the past and the future at once. The observer makes a difference to the final result.
Like a crazy scientist, I set up a double-slit experiment of my own and managed to record interference on a light-sensitive sheet of my cyanotype paper. I am not sure where this will lead, but it had to be done. An Artist looks for answers just like a scientist does.
Exploring the Anthotype process was one of the best things to come out of Lockdown for me. This process was ‘invented’ by John Herschel around 1841 as he was trying to pave the way for colour photography, it even pre-dates Cyanotype. Up until then the only photos were rusty-coloured black & white . Over a century later, I am branching out from my own rusty-looking black & white to try some colour! In summer, when the darkroom was closed, my little city garden became my darkroom.
Herschel used natural dyes from flowers and vegetables. I mainly used extracts from plants I had grown. Some plants work better than others, and many plants I tested do not work well at all. But its a Eureka moment when they do !
I will run a workshop on Anthotype in summer 2021. Its great to bring people closer to plants with a 100% eco process using plants and sunlight alone.
UPDATE : My online art sales are now closed as work was sold out, and galleries are re-opening. I am working towards 3 real life exhibitions. Get in touch for commissions.
With exhibitions cancelled this year, I am listing some recent works for sale online. These would make unique Christmas presents. There seems to be a move towards buying local and from small businesses, which is great to see.
I can deliver next day to SE London postcodes, and many items will fine for posting.
I am sometimes commissioned to make artwork that matches interior decor, or to a specific theme. If that is of interest, get in touch for a quote.
I am proud to present this gallery showing some of the fabulous creations made by students at my various summer online workshops.
click to view and see credits:
My online workshops really took off this summer. Every single one sold out. I enjoyed meeting people from all over the UK and Jerusalem, America and France! Its been an isolating time and there is nothing like joining together over a creative activity.
I am teaching sessions from Beginner to Advanced levels, and some people attended several sessions and made excellent progress. The niche stuff (such as toning cyanotype) is where it gets really interesting. It was a learning curve to run entire workshops on Zoom, but I got the hang of it, my past career in TV has helped.
Lots of online workshops I’d seen were impersonal webinars, or pre-recorded videos or demos. I tried to do something different , by mailing out kits that I put together from hand-made ingredients and recycled packaging. I think it is important to make a real and interactive experience.
Sunprinting and lockdown have been great bedfellows. The sunny season is nearly over now so I just have one Cyanotype Card Making workshop remaining on Fri 6th Nov. I’m planning a special winter Photo Walk too. And the very popular 1-to-1 sessions will continue. In the meantime I have made headway with some of my own important projects : The Leaf Project and my Lockdown Cyanotypes (working titles).
Sarah Garrod 