Kaolin landscape

This project explores the extractive clay mining landscape of St Austell, Cornwall, and the interrelationship of photography with processes of extraction; the massive growth of the industry in the 20th century due to the newly discovered use of kaolin in the glossy surface of photographic paper. The project is two part, with one side showing the paper's effect on the landscape - the scars of extraction - and the other revealing the landscape’s effect on the paper, as place and product become inseparable. Buried in sand and stent waste from decommissioned pits, photographic paper was exposed under the moonlight, then developed with plants growing on the waste tips, and fixed in a mixture of salt and mica-filled wastewater collected from the site; An image is ‘taken’ from the environment.