Radiating with/from Leonie Gossens
Herinneringen Planten / Planting Memories
08–06-2025, 15:00 - 20:00
︎ guest exhibition
︎ process
︎ knowledges
︎ friendship
‘Radiating’ is a small series of day exhibitions, events, workshops, meet ups in my studio at NS16, Tilburg, which are meant to support a community of experimental photographers, researchers and artists who are based in the Netherlands or are passing by. The irregular program is mainly focused on analogue and alternative photography, process-based art, material research, DIY experiments, and more-than-human storytelling. The incentive is to radiate energy from inside out and from outside in.
‘Radiating’ will show work of fellow artists in person and online in this website blog; it will spread experience, recipes and knowledge of the process; and share resources – material and financial if available.
This event is kindly supported, as part of my practice, by Makersfonds Tilburg.
My second guest is an artist Leonie Gossens who will present selection of prints in the series Herinneringen Planten / Planting Memories. During the afternoon there will be room to experiment with alternative processes such as lumen prints as far as the weather allows us. You are cordially invited to join us for the afternoon, between 3 - 8 pm, Sunday 08.06. at studios NS16.
Herinneringen Planten, Leonie Gossens
Leonie Gossens graduated in 2021 cum laude from Photographic Design at NAVB Rotterdam with Project Planting Memories and Project Representation of Miscarriage in Visual Culture / I Miss.
Since 2022 she is working as a photography teacher (both digital and analogue photography). Together with other photography enthousiasts she started Club Caffenol, a place for learning about more sustainable darkroom and alternative techniques, in @delichtkamer in Den Bosch.
As a photographer and artist, she captures what is no longer there, has not yet been or may not have been. Not the here and now, but the absent she translates into something visible. The starting point for her photographic and visual experiments is a sensitivity to the seemingly unnoted, the unwitnessed or deviant. The search for a visual and tangible translation urges her to create.
Follow the artist @leonie_gossens_fotonomie
Herinneringen Planten, Leonie Gossens
Herinneringen Planten, Leonie Gossens
Asking a few questions to Leonie:
1. Can you introduce your process/project?
Existing photographic material as well as an image from everyday reality can be the starting point for my visual research. With analog and digital photographic techniques I manipulate the existing image into something new. The research phase is an essential part for the photographic and visual materiality that ultimately arises. Even though I read and study a lot before working on a project, it is by exploring and doing, acting with my hands that my mind will start to construct thoughts and patterns, I get a sense of meaning. It’s a delicate balance between knowing and feeling.
Especially in Planting Memories I wanted to express that not only the image itself but also the act of creating images is a way to keep memories alive. I examined the memory of my grandmother by studying the photos. Can I find my grandmother in the photos and see more than the object (treasured prints on paper) (“punctum” as Barthes calls it in Camera Lucida)? I try to get closer to my memory by altering the photos, re-owning the photos; examine close to the skin, re-photograph and print the image.
2. The techniques that you use, such as lumen prints, are fading unless they are fixed. How do you approach this fleeting condition? In addition to memories that were captured by a photograph but are now allowed to be altered and re-photographed by your process.
In general, I think it is less important to me that the results of my experiments or artworks last forever. The process of researching and making and the ‘celebration’ of desired or surprising results is just as important to me as the physical object. At the same time, I do love the material, the tactile and cherish the works in that sense. But I accept that just like the moments and memories, the artworks as objects will eventually fade.
While working on Plant Memories, the idea arose to consider the results of the experiments in a physical sense as new negatives and in a mental sense as variations on existing and enriched memories. And especially new memories, both of my mother, my grandmother and the women in our family as well as of the making process and the side roads in our conversations. I hope that the storytelling and meaning-making may continue to grow, even as the works themselves begin to decay.
3. I believe your work challenges the term ‘plant-blidness’. Do you also see it that way? And what does the storytelling with plants as materials and as subjects teach you/can teach others?
For me, it has been self-evident from the beginning of my project to work with plants and to make plants part of the story. The love and care for plants and flowers in their gardens; the fixed rituals of collecting; storing and sowing seeds; caring for and sparingly harvesting flowers; ‘peeling the honesty’ (= removing the seed pods of Lunaria annua); decorating the house with the lantern flowers (= Physalis); the smell of cut pruning waste; the hands that glide through the greenery and softly then powerfully bring order to the garden, the garden as a place to rest, enjoy, dine, play or hide. It is stored in my thoughts and in my body. A weed with unusually shaped leaves; a flower that grows just next to the sidewalk; a stray twig against the wall; a wild plant just behind a fence. I can hardly not see it. When people look at my work I regularly observe that visitors start talking to each other precisely because of their own love for plants and nature or because of the recognition of plants and flowers in my work and also the amazement of fellow visitors for whom the conscious visual experience with these plants is new. Conversations about their own relationship with nature and plants, recognition of species and preference for certain plants and flowers naturally arise. Or amazement and renewed appreciation for the beauty or qualities and value of a plant (biodiversity, food for insects and soil life, beauty, source of food, medicines, dyes etc.) In that sense my work could be an invitation to look at your own environment with renewed eyes and to see and appreciate more.
The plants in my work are sometimes a subject and more often a metaphor, and in addition, they are mainly a source and material in the creative process. My process starts with research and experimentation into the visual effects that I can create with different plants and processes, as well as thinking about stories, making a deliberate choice or a thoughful decision but also intuitive connections between material and the story. Although deeply connected to personal experiences, I try to create space for layered stories and meanings that can be read and interpreted in multiple ways by consciously working with intuition and experimentation in my work process. In my first experiments with eco printing on textiles, making anthotypes and chemigram/lumen prints, the plants of which or with which I made a print automatically became the subject in the image. In this way, I have experimented with great pleasure and created works that I found visually exciting. What I would like to convey to other makers is that it is nice and meaningful to experiment a lot and freely without immediately wanting to focus too much on meaning or stories in your work. Once you have found a method or process that suits you, there is room to think about the role and place of your material in your work process.
note: I don't know if this is exactly what I think about it, I may be formulating a new thought, but it is a start. Conscious intuition is something that has been going through my head for a while :)
4. Finally, I would like to ask about your engagement with more sustainable processes and your work you do in the darkroom De Lichtkamer. Can you introduce your work as a teacher and how can others connect with you?
Thanks to the generous sharing of their knowledge, I have been able to learn a lot from other makers in experimental and sustainable photography. It therefore feels very natural to me to pass on everything I discover and learn to other makers. Partly by discovering a more sustainable way of working in the darkroom, I have become even more aware of the importance of causing as little damage as possible when making my work. In addition, I like to have as much control as possible over my work process and to be aware of the materials and substances with which I make my work. The feeling that I can make my work with what I have available in and around my house, whether it has bloomed, blown over or accidentally grown in an inconvenient place and sometimes specially cultivated, gives me a lot of satisfaction.
With Club Caffenol I share my knowledge and experience of sustainable darkroom materials and processes with like-minded makers, inquisitive, curious or experimenting fanatics. Making Caffenol yourself (non-toxic developer of instant coffee, Vitamin C and soda) is a very concrete and easy to learn method and process, which symbolizes an open conversation about sustainability and creativity and often results in a mind-shift and change in work process. Based on the growing interest and search for creative possibilities, we investigate together what and how we can test more in the darkroom. In the Lichtkamer, a workshop for analog photography in Den Bosch, I am steadily building a community of photographers and visual artists who implement a more sustainable method in their creative processes.
Photodocumentation from the day: (images by Michaela Davidova unless stated otherwise)
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1. Can you introduce your process/project?
Existing photographic material as well as an image from everyday reality can be the starting point for my visual research. With analog and digital photographic techniques I manipulate the existing image into something new. The research phase is an essential part for the photographic and visual materiality that ultimately arises. Even though I read and study a lot before working on a project, it is by exploring and doing, acting with my hands that my mind will start to construct thoughts and patterns, I get a sense of meaning. It’s a delicate balance between knowing and feeling.
Especially in Planting Memories I wanted to express that not only the image itself but also the act of creating images is a way to keep memories alive. I examined the memory of my grandmother by studying the photos. Can I find my grandmother in the photos and see more than the object (treasured prints on paper) (“punctum” as Barthes calls it in Camera Lucida)? I try to get closer to my memory by altering the photos, re-owning the photos; examine close to the skin, re-photograph and print the image.
2. The techniques that you use, such as lumen prints, are fading unless they are fixed. How do you approach this fleeting condition? In addition to memories that were captured by a photograph but are now allowed to be altered and re-photographed by your process.
In general, I think it is less important to me that the results of my experiments or artworks last forever. The process of researching and making and the ‘celebration’ of desired or surprising results is just as important to me as the physical object. At the same time, I do love the material, the tactile and cherish the works in that sense. But I accept that just like the moments and memories, the artworks as objects will eventually fade.
While working on Plant Memories, the idea arose to consider the results of the experiments in a physical sense as new negatives and in a mental sense as variations on existing and enriched memories. And especially new memories, both of my mother, my grandmother and the women in our family as well as of the making process and the side roads in our conversations. I hope that the storytelling and meaning-making may continue to grow, even as the works themselves begin to decay.
3. I believe your work challenges the term ‘plant-blidness’. Do you also see it that way? And what does the storytelling with plants as materials and as subjects teach you/can teach others?
For me, it has been self-evident from the beginning of my project to work with plants and to make plants part of the story. The love and care for plants and flowers in their gardens; the fixed rituals of collecting; storing and sowing seeds; caring for and sparingly harvesting flowers; ‘peeling the honesty’ (= removing the seed pods of Lunaria annua); decorating the house with the lantern flowers (= Physalis); the smell of cut pruning waste; the hands that glide through the greenery and softly then powerfully bring order to the garden, the garden as a place to rest, enjoy, dine, play or hide. It is stored in my thoughts and in my body. A weed with unusually shaped leaves; a flower that grows just next to the sidewalk; a stray twig against the wall; a wild plant just behind a fence. I can hardly not see it. When people look at my work I regularly observe that visitors start talking to each other precisely because of their own love for plants and nature or because of the recognition of plants and flowers in my work and also the amazement of fellow visitors for whom the conscious visual experience with these plants is new. Conversations about their own relationship with nature and plants, recognition of species and preference for certain plants and flowers naturally arise. Or amazement and renewed appreciation for the beauty or qualities and value of a plant (biodiversity, food for insects and soil life, beauty, source of food, medicines, dyes etc.) In that sense my work could be an invitation to look at your own environment with renewed eyes and to see and appreciate more.
The plants in my work are sometimes a subject and more often a metaphor, and in addition, they are mainly a source and material in the creative process. My process starts with research and experimentation into the visual effects that I can create with different plants and processes, as well as thinking about stories, making a deliberate choice or a thoughful decision but also intuitive connections between material and the story. Although deeply connected to personal experiences, I try to create space for layered stories and meanings that can be read and interpreted in multiple ways by consciously working with intuition and experimentation in my work process. In my first experiments with eco printing on textiles, making anthotypes and chemigram/lumen prints, the plants of which or with which I made a print automatically became the subject in the image. In this way, I have experimented with great pleasure and created works that I found visually exciting. What I would like to convey to other makers is that it is nice and meaningful to experiment a lot and freely without immediately wanting to focus too much on meaning or stories in your work. Once you have found a method or process that suits you, there is room to think about the role and place of your material in your work process.
note: I don't know if this is exactly what I think about it, I may be formulating a new thought, but it is a start. Conscious intuition is something that has been going through my head for a while :)
4. Finally, I would like to ask about your engagement with more sustainable processes and your work you do in the darkroom De Lichtkamer. Can you introduce your work as a teacher and how can others connect with you?
Thanks to the generous sharing of their knowledge, I have been able to learn a lot from other makers in experimental and sustainable photography. It therefore feels very natural to me to pass on everything I discover and learn to other makers. Partly by discovering a more sustainable way of working in the darkroom, I have become even more aware of the importance of causing as little damage as possible when making my work. In addition, I like to have as much control as possible over my work process and to be aware of the materials and substances with which I make my work. The feeling that I can make my work with what I have available in and around my house, whether it has bloomed, blown over or accidentally grown in an inconvenient place and sometimes specially cultivated, gives me a lot of satisfaction.
With Club Caffenol I share my knowledge and experience of sustainable darkroom materials and processes with like-minded makers, inquisitive, curious or experimenting fanatics. Making Caffenol yourself (non-toxic developer of instant coffee, Vitamin C and soda) is a very concrete and easy to learn method and process, which symbolizes an open conversation about sustainability and creativity and often results in a mind-shift and change in work process. Based on the growing interest and search for creative possibilities, we investigate together what and how we can test more in the darkroom. In the Lichtkamer, a workshop for analog photography in Den Bosch, I am steadily building a community of photographers and visual artists who implement a more sustainable method in their creative processes.
Photodocumentation from the day: (images by Michaela Davidova unless stated otherwise)
