Richard Laugharn

 Installation view, Northlight Gallery, School of Art, Arizona State University, April 2022

All photographs are archival pigment prints on 100% rag paper, printed in editions of 15 with 2 artist’s proofs

The black and white images are made on 4 x 5 film then digitized, while the color images are captured digitally.

The image elements, including text, are then digitally montaged.

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There are a number of text conventions used throughout the project. Under each image, there is a brief caption noting when the image was made and a roman numeral in parentheses indicating the number of the visit (in the example below it is the forty-seventh visit).

As well, each photograph includes a description of the plant’s location, generally at the image’s top right.

I have named each plant I visit regularly. Generally, these names are inspired by a nearby geographic feature. The title of each image is generally located at the top left of the photograph, and is made up of the plant's name, along with a parenthetical abbreviation of the plant's scientific name, the number of the plant among the individuals from that species I'm photographing, and a coded date for the completed montage.  

The title above refers to a specific jatropha in Sonora, Mexico: Jatropha cuneata #1 (the first jatropha I chose to revisit). The image was finished on April 25, 2015 (I use YYMMDD format, which keeps images in chronological order on my computer). The finished title for this image is thus: The Sykes Crater Jatropha (JC01 150425). All text originates as a word processing document. These are printed, then traced. The traced text is scanned and montaged into the images. This gives the text some “warmth” as well as an allusion to earlier hand applied text (i.e. botanical illustration).

The prints are signed, titled and editioned in pencil on the verso.

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