Listening to Cyanobacteria
Photography is toxic in several ways: many analogue processes are toxic, the digital stream of images slurps energy, but photography is also a mediator of power structures through categorization and definition. As an artist working with photography, Risk Hazekamp (they/them) also holds themselves accountable to photography’s contribution in determining the histories we do perceive and the ones we fail to perceive. They seek alternative, non-chemical and (as far as possible) unbiased methods, as if we are looking through non-human eyes.
Hazekamp is fascinated by Cyanobacteria, which, as the ‘inventor’ of photosynthesis, underpinned our evolution when it filled our atmosphere with oxygen. Cyanobacteria have lived on Earth for three billion years and can rightly be called true survivalists. They thrive even in the face of ecological disturbances, like coming into contact with photographic material, on which the bacteria leave their spores. But that same Cyanobacteria, which was once at the source of life, is now mostly seen as toxic itself.
