S6, E6 Jo Stapleton | Photographer

In this episode, we meet Jo Stapleton, an alternative‑process film and darkroom photographer known for her richly experimental approach to analogue image‑making. Jo’s practice spans lith printing, photograms, chemigrams, and cyanotypes, creating constructed photographic realities shaped by models, found objects, collage, and hands‑on darkroom manipulation.

Her work explores themes of memory, biology, the body, common ground, and nature reclaiming space, most notably through her acclaimed series Foreign Bodies and Rewilding. Jo shares how Foreign Bodies grew from darkroom experimentation using domestic glass and histology transparencies, and how Rewilding merges photograms of weeds with film images of classical sculpture to question value systems and the politics of “high art.”

Episode recorded on 1 March 2026. 

Website: https://jostapleton-beatniksoupphotography.com/about 
Instagram: @beatniksoupphotography

Podcast details:
Podcast email: artiststalespodcast@gmail.com
Website: www.artiststales.net
Instagram: @artists_tales_podcast
Threads: @artists_tales_podcast

Transcript

I'd like to welcome Jo Stapleton to this episode of Artist Tales. She's an analog and alternative process photographer whose work turns the dark room into a space for experimentation and storytelling. Working with Lith, printing, photograms, grams, and cyanotypes. She builds constructed realities for models, found objects, collage, and hands-on manipulation.

Welcome, Jo. Thank you very much, Heather. It's wonderful to have you. So to start off, tell us a bit more about yourself as an artist and what you do. Yes, yes, of course. So I kind of described myself a bit as a Dark Room adventurer, and as you were sort of saying, I think the dark room. Is very much a creative space for me.

It's, uh, it's a bit of a, an escape, I guess, from the outside world, but it's also the place where I can really think about, reflect and construct my images. So I shoot a lot of images on film or camera, less photography. But those initial images, those initial shots with my camera are just the start of the development of that, that image.

So it's once I'm in the dark room. The door is closed, nobody can come in. Not even the cat, although he tries to that. It's that time I spend alone in that room where I can just explore. I can wonder what if I can try things out? Yeah. It's, it's a real special place and I feel very privileged to have a dark room at home to, in which to do that.

I think you're very lucky in that, in that sense because you do need to have the space to do that and a dark space, you know, as in no light, because as probably some of us who are a bit older now, you know, with film photography, it's all light based, so you do get a dislike based for digital, but for film and non-digital sort of format.

You can actually ruin the film or the, the, the actual, whatever you're working with, if you live in light accidentally. A Absolutely. I've had a, a dark room at home now for around 14 years and, uh, before that I would try and assemble a dark room on the top of my stairs on the landing. So it would take me about an hour and a.

Black out the flat. So tape up all of the windows and the doors and I'd be on my knees on the landing with my enlarger running in and out of the bathroom. And, uh, I loved doing it, but it, it was such a mission to make it happen. And often my work would be spoiled by that light creeping in from, from somewhere.

So. Yeah. It's, it's finding that that space to do the work is, is really important. But I, it didn't just happen. It took me a long time to get there and Yeah. And you're very fortunate. And also when you were initially talking and, and describing what you were doing. To me it's almost like Photoshop without using Photoshop.

Yes. You're constructing, you're constructing something I think. I think so. And it, it's quite interesting. I'm a member of London Independent Photography and I, I run a couple of their satellite groups and there's a fantastic group I'm involved in called London and Beyond. So it's got photographers from K based anywhere and we meet once a month over Zoom and we're a real mix of kind of.

Analog and digital. And, uh, quite a few members in the group are, uh, our work in some respects is quite similar. We're playing with lights, texture, and that sort of thing, but we'll be using completely different tools and approaches. So analog and digital. Sometimes we'll use the same language. So I was saying to somebody the other day about dodging and burning in the dark room.

So, uh, wanting to sort of block some of the light, getting some of my paper or burning more of the image. And they said, oh, that's what you do in Photoshop. So it's really interesting how that kind of analog terminology has become part of the, the digital world and the digital tools. But we're all doing the same thing, and I don't believe that there is any hierarchy.

Um, I find technology really difficult. And I don't find it interesting, but for me there is something about physically holding the materials, pouring the liquid, having that very hands-on approach. That's the bit that's really exciting for me. I think it's very tactile as well. It, it is, it, it often feels, uh, like a craft.

So. Learning those skills has, again, kind of taken a long, a long time and there's a bit where you are no longer having to really think about what you are doing. It becomes less exact and kind of more instinctual. So you, you know, you sort of think, oh, that's gonna, you know, take that amount of time or that images is gonna work with that process or that one won't.

So it, it's kind of you grow through experience. I can imagine that that's certainly the case. Now, in my introduction, I listed out a number of different processes and I'd imagine that a lot of people haven't heard of them or perhaps aren't aware of them. So could you describe them or just briefly go through what each one is?

Yes, yes, of course. So I think I started off learning how to develop black and white film. So I do that myself and then learning how to. Print using black and white chemistry and, and processes. So that was kind of my springboard where I kind of learn the real basic skills. But from that, I, I began printing with a process called Lith Printing.

And basically what it is, is it's black and white film developer that's heavily diluted. With formaldehyde, and it still uses it a dark room, but you have an enormous amount of capacity to impact how the image is produced. And lith is something called a contagious development. So when you put your image.

You've just exposed your negative into that development tray. It doesn't just all spring to life, areas of the image kind of come out. It's a very slow process as well. So often I'll find, uh, you know, it might take me an hour to develop one image while it's in the development tray. Uh, the, the qualities and the tonal range of the image changes during the session as well.

So you get to a point where you are. Development chemicals become exhausted and it's called Old Brown, and this is often at the point. It gives you those really kind of. Rich orangy brown tone. So I love lit printing because I just feel like I have so much control when I'm exposing the negative. I can do that kind of dodging and burning and think, well, I can, I can slow down the contagious development in this area of the the print, and then I'm gonna get interesting patterns and other things happening.

So lit printing, I really, really love. And it's not, it's not difficult to do. Uh, and I think it's a great place to start with printing. The other process is you mentioned I do a lot of chemi gram printing. This is, uh, using my negative in an enlarger, projecting it onto the, the paper, exposing it in the usual way, and then everything becomes the reverse of usual.

So instead of putting that, that piece of paper in a development, stop and fix tray. All of those black and white chemistry baths become a creative tool. So I use them in spray bottles. I paint with them, things go in and out of the trays, all in the wrong order. You know, I scrub in bits of developer, I might fix bits of the image before I start.

And, and for me, it's, it feels very much, kind of a bit painfully because I'm using that, that chemistry in a very. Different way and the images can look quite interesting. Sort of liquid in, in origin. So I must confess, Heather, I, I've never really been able to draw or paint. So for me, the Gram process, it, it almost gives me that impression that I'm, I'm, I'm painting that image, which of course I'm not because it's, it's started from a negative, but I'm controlling that process.

Other processes I use, uh, some of the older historical printing processes have become very interested in salt printing recently, which was sort of one of the really early ways of printing and fixing an image. It's very interesting to do. It's quite frustrating because it's very unforgiving, high chance of failure.

Lots of interesting adventures making that work. But also it's very similar to things like Stenotype and Van Dyke Printing, where when people were creating images using these processes, they didn't have a dark room because dark rooms didn't. Exist. So they were using UV light and the sun to actually kind of expose and develop those images.

So I, I guess I've got now quite a range of different approaches I can use to produce work. And what I try and do is if I think I want to do a series of salt print images, the process will inform what photographs I take with my camera because I'll be thinking about what is gonna work with that. With that process.

So it's, uh, pulling those two things together. I was gonna ask whether the process influences kind of what you're doing, what drives you? Is it the process or is it the actual themes you're trying to explore? Because I know there are some themes you do explore, like memory, biology, that sort of thing. So is it kind of one influences the other or do you think I'm doing this type of.

Process, I'm going to do this theme? Or is it more you're driven by the theme and that then dictates kinda what images you do and then what type, type of process you're doing? Uh, I, I think it's, it's uh, probably a bit of both. So sometimes I've got a really strong idea. And I know what process I'm, I'm going to use.

Uh, but sometimes it, it comes from a position of inquiry where I'm wondering, can I do that? Would that work with that process? And I think just before sort of the COVID lockdown at my local art center in Lakeworth, where I live in Hartfordshire, they'd got an exhibition of Cornelia Parkers. Etchings of Fox Tolbert, one of the, the, you know, the, the great sort of pioneers of photography and printing.

She'd made these etchings of, of glass glassware that was in his, his, his home. And I thought, hmm. I wonder if I could do that with lit printing. Would that even work? I've never tried it before, but I went and scaled the local charity shop, found some decorative glass objects, and started making photograms with them using the lit process.

So just shining the light from the enlarger onto the photographic paper in the, the dark room, and it worked. But what was interesting about it is it looked. Very sort of biological in nature. These, these glass objects looked like they were floating around in, in fluid, and obviously everyone was thinking about COVID and things, including me at the time.

I happened to have an old medical textbook. Which had some transparencies of cells and tissues of the human body. So it had obviously been used as part of lectures. And I remember thinking, oh, I wonder what would happen. Could I project those cells and tissues and make them part of the photogram? Object.

So I've got, I've got these bits of glass that seem to be sort of floating in bodily fluids. Can I now incorporate the cells? And I did that. So that then became a whole series of image called foreign bodies. So the whole thing was, uh, camera less. And it brought together kind of macro biology with bits of sort of broken.

Broken glass. So I think that's often where my work starts from a point of inquiry of could I do that? And I had no idea when I set out that there was gonna be a project there or how it would develop, what it would be about it. It came sometimes from that initial inquiry of, I wonder if that would work.

Could I possibly, could I possibly do that? And it sounds like that project was a bit serendipitous, so maybe you can talk about some of your projects and how they came about. Yes, of course. I think an another kind of similar one that started from uh, inquiry is I've recently completed a project called Cartography.

So I am a magpie, so I collect all kinds of random things that find their way as found objects into my work. So I had some really old ordinance survey maps of the British Isles, and again. I wonder if, could I print on these maps using the cyanotype process? I made quite a few prints. They weren't particularly very successful, and then I realized to make it work, instead of printing negative images onto the maps, I tried printing positive images and these were images of kind of trees and things that I'd shot.

So how they appear is sort of the inside or the body of the tree. Is translucent. So you can see the details of the map within the body of the tree and large areas of the map are now obscured by the blue, the cyanotype. So you have this kind of idea of instead of maps, defining nature, setting out pathways, fields, mountains, all that topography, you've now got the trees that are defining the pathways.

So nature starts to. Reimagine and reinterpret those, those maps. So again, that kind of started from a a, what if, I guess an example of a project that started the other way, the other way round. I've just come back from a two week artist residency. It's the Mouth Act residency in Wales. By the mouth estuary.

So I was there for two weeks and I'd taken a few different kind of materials with me. So I had some options for making work, not really knowing what I was going to do, but actually being in an area where the beauty and the landscape is almost overwhelming and you'd think that's great for a photographer.

Lots of mountains and things that you can photograph. But actually it's, it's not great because everything. So beautiful. There are so many astounding, beautiful views. Uh, it, it feels like you could just take lots of beautiful pictures, almost just document what's there. And the thing that really struck me about being in and around the estuary was one about light, because the light constantly shifts.

And also I became interested in this kind of idea of thin spaces and a thin space. It's kind of a bit, sort of, uh. Grounded in. Sort of philosophy and, uh, folklore. But a thin space is a place that kind of forms a bridge between this world and, and the next. So in, in Welsh folklore, that kind of is like fairy talk really, which is less me.

But often a thin space is somewhere that you experience something and sometimes it can just be kind of awe at the beauty of your surroundings. It's not always something that you can articulate or put into words, and I wanted to try and kind of cap. To this idea and make visible this idea of the thin space about there's something else going on now, whether it's spiritual, whether it's just the interplay of light, it's just something else is happening there.

So I started taking my photographs and then back at the residency I began. Incorporating bits of fabric interface into my images and the fabric interface. It's kind of semi-transparent, but it's lots and lots of very tiny dots and, uh, floating that within the image you get this sense of this pool of light.

Something else happening, another narrative. So I think that's probably an example of the work and the process being informed by the place rather than that kind of what if idea. Yeah. I mean there's a lot there. You know, I mean, what I'm hearing is there seems to be a lot of influences, whether it's the natural world, potentially spirituality or.

Even if you're not just spirituality, it's kind of something other that you sense in, in the landscape or the area you're in. So I, I'd like to touch on what influences you or who influences you when you're starting to think about your work and, and some of the projects. Yeah, I think I've got quite a wide range of influences 'cause I, I didn't start life as a photographer, like lots, lots of people back in the day when I was at school in the eighties.

Art. Only meant drawing and painting, and I could do neither of those, as I've already already mentioned. So the world of art just didn't seem it was gonna be for me. But while I was at university and I was, I'm a musician, so I was studying music, but I was really lucky to be in an environment where we were told You are not one thing.

Art isn't a classification or a category, and there was this whole sort of, uh, opportunity to try, try out other things and not think of yourself and put yourself into, into a box. So as a result of that, I was involved in kind of creating installations that would bring together things like music and visual arts and textiles and all of those things.

And there'd be a real kind of cross pollination, but I think. One of the, sort of the big influences for me for photography. I was at university in Manchester and there was a exhibition of Cindy Sherman's photographs, so this would've been around 1993, 1994. And I didn't really know who she was, didn't really know very much about photography, and I walked in there.

I was astounded that she was able to create an entire world, an entire narrative in a single image, in a single photograph. And that, that appealed to me. It, it felt really, uh, sort of. Efficient economical. It, it suddenly opened my, my eyes to photography about this idea of sort of storytelling and constructing images.

So I think Cy Sherman was, was sort of very much a part of that. And other artists as well. I think Lori Simmons who, uh, in the seventies, she did a series in and around house. Using DOS Doll's, house models and furniture to kind of tell this narrative. That was something that I went on to try myself. I did a series called Doll's House Drama using Lit Printing, and it was kind of a film noir Alfred Hitchcock esque, lots of shadows and interplay kind of psychological drama except in a, in a Doll's House.

And I think what I really liked. About both sort of Laurie Simmons and Cindy Sherman is they didn't need permission to do that. They were doing something very personal, perhaps autobiographical, being able to explore ideas and themes using this kind of visual medium. And I, I think, yeah, that, that's had quite a big, a big impact on me.

And then in terms of sort of the cross. Pollination. I'm quite a fan of sort of German expressionism. So as a music student, I was, uh, a real fan girl for an unlikely composer called Arnold Schuberg. And he, uh, sort of broke the rules of to. Tonal of, he broke the rules of tonality. So he moved away from the scale and he, he found this whole other system of expression and there was something there around revealing ideas of kind of emotion and the inner world.

So I think that's probably still sloshing around. Somewhere, this idea of being able to construct images, express either sort of the inner world, but then also explore what what's going on in the world around me. So yeah, I dunno if that answers your question. I think it does, and it just shows not only your influences, but the breadth of kind of your photography in terms of your imagination being curious, storytelling.

Although you've said you are not particularly technical, you need to understand enough about the photography technology and some of the chemicals and what they can do in order to kind of create what you're creating. Yeah, I, I, I think I'd agree with that. I think I, I mix up. The chemistry myself and I coat papers.

So for things like stype and salt printing and van Dyke. So in a way that's kind of taking it right back to, to basics of creating what's gonna be the light sensitive emulsion and, and coating the the paper. So I've had to learn how to do that and how to understand it. But I think if you've never done those things before.

It can feel really daunting. And I meet lots of photographers all the time who shoot on film, but they don't develop their own film and it's so easy to do. So one of the things that I'm really passionate about as well is sharing skills. So I've run. A number of workshops now for fellow London independent photography members.

So, uh, you know, not very expensive, but people come and I, I did a very ambitious one with type printing. So at about four hours people got to mix up their own chemistry, try a bit of paper coating, make some prints, do a bit of toning. So like a crash, a crash course. So that, I think I definitely learned by.

By doing. And often I'll just go and do sort of like a half day or a one day workshop on a process, just enough to make me feel kind of comfortable and confident to have a go. And then it's very much kind of practice based. Learning those skills, gaining the experience. And, uh, it, it, it doesn't just come overnight.

And I think even something like stype, which is quite an easy process, it took me a long time to learn how to coat the paper really well and what's gonna work and what's, what's not going to work. So. Like the best things. Nothing is ever instant. It's still a craft that you need to, to learn, but it's an accessible craft.

It, it's not super scientific. Don't need to have, I don't believe, studied photography at, at university to do it. You don't need permission to try, you know, you can just do these things yourself. It's all, it's all sort of available. And I think that's the biggest thing is not only having the confidence, but realizing actually, like you say, you don't need the permission.

You just go and do it. Yeah. Ab absolutely. Yeah. I want to pick up with you the point you made about when you're going through school, you, you didn't really pick up photography, so where did you pick up photography? How did you get into it? Um, I think it, it, it probably started. At university, so being around people who were studying photography or doing fine art and that kind of cross pollination of, of us working together to make installations.

But one of, I think my gateway into photography Bizarre was super eight filmmaking. So I was involved in making some Super eight films inspired by, uh, Derek Jarman. Again, another big inspiration at the time. And, uh, I remember sitting with the film that had been developed and splicing it together. So physically editing with bits of film and taping them together.

And that was like a, a magic moment for me that you could physically make something. And it was from that point really then that I started to shoot film and found out somebody showed me how I could. Develop it. And then it was a very long time, I think, of taking terrible photographs, ruining film by not doing it properly, making very bad prints in the dark room because I was trying to kind of figure it out and get it to work.

But I love doing it. It's, it's. Something to do. I think with physically having control over that and influence and it feels very personal, it immediately feels like yours. So, I've got my images, but this is my film. I've processed my film and now I'm gonna work with it to, to, uh, to take it somewhere else and to explore it.

Yeah, and I think certainly I got very serious in photography at university as well. Not because of my degree necessarily, but because they had a dark room and it was the traditional dark room, so it was before everything got digitized and. I think like you is a very tactile, it's very, you know, you can see things.

It's very organic because it is, it is the chemicals in the paper paper and you can see the image just starting to come out once you've, you know, I did the basic black and white, so you could see the image coming out on the paper once you put it in into the developer and. You know, each picture is, has it, you know, you could be as close as possible to each time, but they ha were slightly different.

Yes. So there's, I think there's, there's something really magical about that, about seeing that, that image, that image appear. And I know certainly when I've done. Workshops elsewhere. So I ran some Santa type printing workshops for the One Roof Festival of Homeless Arts a couple of years ago. And so people who were coming along to the festival were people who mostly had no experience of photography or.

Philosophers. We all have a mobile phone and we capture some images, but there was something magical there about helping people to take those images from their phone, or maybe not even have a photograph, but to draw something on acetate and then to make a sonatype print with it. And seeing people ex experience that moment of magic of something I've drawn, something I, I've taken with my phone and it's, it.

It's become a physical thing. It's become, it's become a print. So I find that really exciting and I love working with people who are not photographers because again, it's that idea of, uh, I think we can get really hung up on the right way of doing things, the correct way, the techniques, all of that. And I guess it's the same around sort of, uh, styles of photography and the language of photography.

Sometimes you can feel, if you've not studied it, that there's almost like a secret language. You know, you don't know what, what that is or what's about. You can spend a lot of time sort of, uh, seeking to emulate work that you know is, uh, sort of revered. But if you are coming at it from an approach where you're not really focusing on or thinking about any of those things, it's really freeing.

So I love seeing people completely not overthinking anything. They're just making something or doing something because they like it. And I always find that really inspiring. You can, you can just do it. Don't need any permission. Just make something. And I think there's immense satisfaction in that. I agree.

And you know, it's funny you mentioned about the rules of photography. I think whatever you practice, quite often there's an established way of doing it. Oh yes. The rules. Yes. And there is something really freeing, particularly if you don't know much about a particular sort of art form of coming in fresh and new and almost upending kind of the established.

Of doing stuff, you know, there, there might be a good reason why, we'll, we do it a certain way. Like you wouldn't walk into a, you know, a dark room and turn on the white light. No. You know, like, no. Although you, there's reason for, although you might if, if you wanted to do some solarization, but Yes, yes, but true, certainly not true.

You've just stopped under my argument there. But No, but you know what I mean, like the, perhaps that's a bad example there. You know, in and in some ways I think those rules are almost like guidance. And I remember someone saying to me ages ago saying. You know, okay. Learn the rules, but you'll learn the rules to know how to break them.

Yes. Uh, and I think that's probably. Fair point. 'cause you have to learn some of the technical, you need to understand how the materials work and you need to be able to know about kind of exposure and development. But I think it is, if you, the, the, the, the rules, the way of doing things can, I think sometimes stop your curiosity.

So one of my favorite things to do, uh, Heather, which I think would appall people, is. When I'm with my enlarger, I'm constantly posting things into my enlarger with the negative. So I, I'm incorporating other objects as photograms while I'm projecting the negative onto the paper. And I'm sure if I went into, um, professional dark room, they'd probably rugby tackle me down to the floor.

So they'd go, what is whatcha doing? You're gonna do something ridiculous. Done. You know, I found myself doing all kinds of crazy things. So when I was working on that foreign body series at one point I was smashing up a glass decanter with a hammer in my dark room under safe light because I got this idea about.

Can I do stop start exposure? Can I make it look like these pieces of glass are breaking up and tumbling? The only way to do it is in here. So I was there with my hammer thinking, is this really sent? I can't see very well. I put it in kind of a plastic bag. That's probably okay, isn't it? But probably not.

But I think in those, in those moments, and, and one of the great things about having your own creative space is you don't have to justify anything or explain anything, and no one's going to say, is that really a very sensible thing to do? Because often it's not. But yep, you're in the moment. And, and having that freedom is amazing.

And I did cut myself well for art. For art. For art. Yes. Yes. And what I'm going to say is you're also really subversive. Yeah. Thank you. You know, and I think that's part of art, isn't it? We're kind of pushing the boundaries and there might be rules, quote unquote rules about art. But I think in some ways those rules can be, it's a double-edged sword tho.

They can actually stifle. And sometimes you need to have that inquisitiveness, that subversiveness to push things to kind of see what works, what doesn't. Because that's creativity, isn't it? It it is, and it doesn't, it doesn't always, uh, always work. But I think I've got, again, another exhibition I went to see, not a photography.

But, uh, sister Carita Kent, who was a, she did lots of screen and lino printing, so she was a nun and she did lots of really subversive art with political messaging, but she used to teach. Art lessons and she basically had these 10 rules for creativity. And I've got this stuck up in my dark room and it says really basic things like, just make, don't think about it.

Just do. Because it's the people who make things all the time are the ones who discover new things. So for me, I think it's almost like, um. A muscle memory. So I try and print something every week, even if I haven't got a, a project on the go or a fixed plan. 'cause it's often from those moments of experiment that it turns into something and then it might become a series.

And also, uh, she mentions. John Cage. So I know him as a musician, but he was an artist as well. And he talks about always leaving room for the X quantities. So these are the things that you are not planning the uh, I guess in photography we often talk about sort of Wabi savvy, don't we, about the, uh, you know, the.

Unpredictable, uh, things that might happen might be a, a a in the chemical process. It might be light, it might be another element, something that doesn't work. And that's really exciting as well, because, uh, leaving the room for things to go wrong, things might not work, but, but giving yourself permission to just try things.

So I'm always saying to myself, I wonder if. I wonder if I can, I wonder what would happen if I do that. So I don't ever think, do you know, I've got no reason to break up a glass decant in my, uh, dark room and safe light. I just go, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do it because I've got, I'm starting with that inquiry.

And I think that sort of, that creative approach is the thing. I think that, um. It's kind of the gateway really to, to exploring your practice and creating those images. So not having a plan can feel, I think sometimes a bit worrying about feeling that you haven't got a focus or you're not starting from a position saying, I'm going to make a series of images about.

X and it sometimes it's just trusting in the muscle memory and just think, if I start doing something, I'm always gonna learn something and then I can respond to that and that might turn into something. So yeah, I think that's, that's probably at the heart of my practice now is, is learning, responding, and doing.

And I think I'm gonna steal that from you to be fair. I think I'm gonna steal that, if that's okay. Very, very much so, yes. I did, um, want to touch on your signature project. So we did touch on foreign bodies earlier in our conversation. The other one I wanted to ask you about is Rewilding, that project called Rewilding.

So could you talk a little bit more about that project? Yeah. So the Rewilding project brought together. Two. Two ideas. So one was having made foreign bodies and had my adventures with broken glass in the dark room. I knew Photograms worked really well with the lit process, so I wanted to do some more. So.

The, the Rewilding project came from a holiday in Italy and I was visiting a lot of sort of the churches and the piezos where they have historic houses with beautiful kind of statues and, and figurines of gods and deities, and they were kind of seen as high culture and high value art. So I was photographing some of those.

And brought them home as my negatives. And I was thinking again about how can I subvert this? So how can I juxtapose something that's very valuable culturally, very high art with something that's, uh, kind of very. Commonplace and every day. So I started collecting weeds from sort of my garden. It's not completely full of weeds, but there are quite a few and the surrounding area.

And so what I did is I was projecting the statues. That I'd shot in Italy and then incorporating weeds and wild flowers as photographs, photographs in, into the, into the prints. It was this idea for me around, um, nature, sort of, you know, if everything went to rack and ruin and we all disappeared very quickly.

You know, when you come across sort of abandoned. Areas or abandoned structures. Nature always finds a way into the cracks. Weeds and wildflowers grow. They nature reclaims the mess that we leave behind. So that rewilding project kind of came from the idea of sort of high art with something that's very sort of like a waste project, very low status.

And I, I guess in, in my fantasy world, I would love to see lots of the things that we consider as high art as being reclaimed by this wild nature. So yeah, it was those two kind of ideas and thoughts coming together there in, in the dark room. I find that really interesting because it's almost that exploring the two opposite ends really of, of life really.

Yeah, I think, I think, I think so. And, and the thing that's, that's astounding as well is the actual weeds are really beautiful and they are weeds. So, you know, or what we consider consider as weeds, yeah. As, as weeds or waste or not wanted. And, you know, they're just as beautiful as all the other things that we kind of deliberately, uh, grow and, and nurture.

And I guess it was the same thing really from the Foreign Bodies project of projecting those cells and tissues is, we're not aware of what goes on in our bodies at that kind of macro level, but those cells and tissues were really beautiful. Um, one of my favorite transparencies was. An image of motor neurons.

And you know, we, I, I had a, a former colleague who sadly passed away from motor neuron disease. So we, we, our association with it is, is, you know, understandably really upsetting and really difficult. And I made a, a photogram using a a, a giant light. Bulb that had come from an old theater lamp. And so going back to my kind of magpie tendencies of just collecting things and this was on the paper and then projected the motor neuron cells through the light bulb, and it was really, really beautiful.

I've since made a number of prints. I've remade the photogram for a few people who've lost someone from MND because it's, it's, I guess it's quite a nice memorial, but it's another way of thinking about body and nature and, and you know, the fact that we are. All these things are curiously beautiful, but we don't, we don't often think about or see them.

Indeed. Now, last question is, what's next? Where do you see your photography going? Uh, well I've, I've just come back from my, my two week artist residency and while I was there, I'd started doing some matcha tone, stype prints, just because it was the easiest to do while I was there on, on site, and I was looking at.

The landscape, taken lots of images, you know, photographs of the land and seascapes, but incorporating this fabric interface, this idea of exploring the thin space of representing that within the photograph. So I think that's probably for the next few months, that's gonna be my focus. Thinking about how can I.

Kind of depict this, this magical essence, this awe in, in nature. And I guess a bit around the, sort of the spirituality and light. So that's, that's kind of coming along. And also in June, uh, very excited. I've got my first book of photography coming out, published by Shutter Hub as one of their solo. So I'm working on that at the moment.

I haven't got a title yet. I'm terrible at things like that, but it's launching in in June. So in the short term, I think they're kind of my, my focus is, and I think, to be honest, Heather, I, I just. Love spending time in my dark room. I love the creative process. It's such an important element of my life, so I'm just gonna carry on.

I'm, I'm probably gonna smash some more decanters or feed some inappropriate things into my enlarger and just, just see where it takes me, but not worry too much about it. Just trust in the process and respond to it to what emerges. Definitely that, that sounds very exciting, including the smashing of a decanters.

So. Well, thank you. It's been lovely speaking with you. Thank you so much, Heather, and, and you know, really, uh, an honor to be invited on the podcast, so, so I've loved listening to your other interviews with, with other artists, so yeah, it's, it's been brilliant. Thank you. Well, it's been an honor having you, so thank you as well.

Thanks for listening to my conversation with Jo. Her work really is based on experimentation, being curious, and storytelling. More information about Jo is in the show notes. In the next episode, I'm talking with Hannah Horton, who is a melodic maverick on the jazz scene. You won't want to miss it.