Hideyuki Ishibashi

Hideyuki Ishibashi’s creative process is inspired by the primitive history of photography.  His experimental works build upon William Fox Talbot’s first negative/positive process, botanist Anna Atkins’ cyanotype that could make prints of plants by placing them on photosensitive paper, and the many experiments of theplaywright August Strindberg, inspired by the medium’s “uncertain” nature at the time.

Hideyuki Ishibashi has developed an organic photographic practice that explores the medium’s photosensitivity, including its reversible nature, in the sense that the image produced changes with exposure to light. This sensitivity to light enables symbiosis with plants, through photosynthesis. He thereby creates series of tangible, impermanent images, a new way to experience time and memory.

His subtle range of vegetable dyes, made from infusions of leaves and bark, allows him to revive ancient shades for his photographs and appeal to our sense of smell as much as to our eyes.

Atlas #6 presents prints of leaves from trees in Barbieux Park, in Roubaix, obtained through a combination of scans and photograms. The images, printed in photographic form using “photochromic” ink (pigments that react to light rays), appear and disappear under the UV light of the flashlight, imitating sunlight filtering through leaves.