Underwater Dance of Life: Vanitas Art with Endangered Blue Winged Butterfly

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From the very beginning I have aimed to explore new forms of expression through research and process methodology through the techniques of analog photography used since 1850; inspired by pioneers of photography such as Henry Peach Robinson, Édouard Baldus and Gustave Le Gray.

Each of these works is an original shot on 5 x 4 or 8 x 10 inch transparency film, scanned at high resolution with industry standard colour profiling applied. These images can scale to billboard sizes without showing any sign of film grain structure. There are no post production changes made to the colours, no retouching, no artificial intelligence (AI), special effects or other processes applied of any kind to the original image.

The butterfly is widely significant in different cultures; symbolising love, regeneration, fortune, freedom, spirituality and death. The connection Greek Mythology draws between butterflies and the souls of those who have passed away is of particular interest to me.

I explore this subject underwater in a hyper-real and painterly aesthetic with unique light refractions created through the water's wave energy and movement interacting with the scene and the light.

For the original ‘Swarm’ series started in 2008 I began breeding these remarkable butterflies in the studio something that became an obsession for me to care for them all in the best way possible; often not leaving the studio for months at a time. It took many years of dedicated work to develop the process and breeding program to fully explore the subject. 

My use of water literally paints the subject with light, acting as a reflection on life and mortality and how fleeting it is, beautiful and ultimately, tragic. The deep blues of these rare specimens against the black void of the water, the use of bubbles symbolising mortality. Just as in life, the viewer never quite knowing when it will burst. These works are a contemporary vanitas for the modern world, exploring the frailty of nature in an entirely new way.

In 2014 I further developed the process with a new body of work titled ’Transparency of a dream’. These differ greatly from the original works; here the scene was captured on a single large format film plate with a parent butterfly specimen; these plates were then stored unprocessed with detailed notes attached until their offspring were born and matured through metamorphosis in a series of major changes to their body form as it moves through its life cycle. Butterflies and moths undergo a complete metamorphosis, there are four separate stages in the life cycle - egg, larva, pupa, and adult.

The offspring siblings were then photographed in the same process underwater, but over the top of the original parent plates. Creating a dream like sensation of descendants dancing with one another; something that can never occur in nature. 

Their appearance of sheer fluttering delicacy, ghost like scenes enabled by creating time delayed sculptural scenes underwater with painstaking intricacy, each piece is not only a unique physical entity but embodies an unrepeatable aesthetic efflorescence; representing the singular, ghostly event of artistic consummation performed through painterly liquid mechanics.

The only physical record of these events ever having taken place, is the single piece of acetate film produced through a monastic approach to artistic creation.

Original like a sketch or painting, these one-off artworks reverse the conventional parameters of photographic works. Blurring the lines between sculpture, painting and photography. Existing only as a single piece of 8 x 10 inch acetate and one unique edition print.

Press links exploring the series & its environmental signature. 

‘Art & Collectables’ by Tricia Divets in Private Air Magazine. 

‘Deep Waters’ by Camilla Apcar for Luxury London.

‘The impact of humans on the insect world’ studio journal. 

‘Water is the new oil’ studio journal.