The Darkroom Social: Isobel Markus-Dunworth and Remi Siciliano collecting botanicals near Gunyah
While at Gunyah we worked on making experimental solutions and recipes for local botanical photographic developers.
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| The Darkroom Social: collecting seaweed by the Gunyah jetty |
We were lucky enough to split our residency time - spending one week in June where we collected local materials and made large drums of extractions. To collect these materials we spent time exploring around the North Arm Cove bush and coast, foraging for washed up seaweed, fallen bark and lantana weeds. We left these extractions brewing at Gunyah and returned for our second week in July, where we tested out these solutions and their viability as developers to process the black and white silver gelatin film we were shooting around the site.
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| The Darkroom Social: botanical extractions at Gunyah |
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| The Darkroom Social: processing on the Gunyah jetty |
We had a lot of success with all of the botanicals we extracted at Gunyah, and the long extraction time for the seaweed and the bark seemed to be perfect. We have uploaded a few recipes and examples onto our website: https://www.thedarkroom.social/recipes
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| The Darkroom Social: film drying on the Gunyah deck |
The quiet surroundings, the nightly fires, and the morning sun on the balcony were all little luxuries that we enjoyed while working, talking and processing many rolls and test strips of film. Our time spent outside during the residency inspired us to refine our film processing workflow - we can now confidently say that we can process film in eco developers completely outdoors (from the shooting, to the loading and processing, to the scanning)!
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| The Darkroom Social: print drying on the Gunyah deck |
While most of our stay was spent collaborating, we also had a bit of time working individually on our own experiments and projects. Issi tested out a new underwater film camera in the water around the jetty and in the ocean, and Remi started growing fungus through some rolls of 35mm film that was shot around North Arm Cove.
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| The Darkroom Social: colour negative scan, Gunyah rocks |
It was a beautiful, productive time up at Gunyah and we feel very lucky to have had this generative time up there amongst the Kookaburras and Tawny Frogmouths. Thank you for having us Gunyah!
The Darkroom Social: Tawny Frogmouth, process caffenol delta hp5
Gunyah residency report, July 2024
The Darkroom Social
Isobel Markus-Dunworth and Remi Siciliano
