Printing with UV

I started collecting things that make pollen (grasses, wildflowers) from the pollen trap sites and I wanted to experiment with how I could make images from them. When I'm at the sites, I keep thinking about the air and what's in the air that we can't see... pollen, pollution particles, etc. and how could I make this visible?

 

In the past I've done a lot of work with cyanotypes, making images from the sun's UV. UV light is from the part of the spectrum that is invisible to our eyes, so it's on my list of Things We Can't See. I took some of the things I had collected and placed them onto UV sensitised silk screens to see what I got. I've been layering up prints from these screens and I'm starting to like the results. It seems to me that layering up images goes some way to representing the many layers of the sites I am working with, and I like how some of the prints have background colours that could be things floating in the air.

I've also started playing around with a microscope to make images, especially of pollen and the pollen traps. My microscope isn't powerful enough to see pollen up close, but it's still interesting to see what is revealed. I could definitely see particles floating in the liquid in the pollen trap which I couldn't see with the naked eye. I will see if I can process these images into prints too.

I'll be exploring more ways of making images using Things We Can't See at the Fruit Routes event on 15th June (check their website to see what else is happening that week). As well as using the microscope some more, I'm hoping to do something with gravity, and possibly try something with the weight of air!