Teresa
Morrison

volunteers

My mother called weeds "volunteers," a generous appellation, I thought, from an avid gardener such as she. I suppose that's as good a place as any to begin to try and explain my attraction to invasive plants. They are survivors in inhospitable spaces. I harvest them on "weed walks" around campus and in neighborhoods and image them directly to expired photo papers in contact print frames using lumen and phytogram techniques. I lith-develop the result to express shadow details, allowing me to fix the otherwise ephemeral impressions for permanence. While I find the process immensely pleasurable—from seeking out handsome weeds to printing, developing, fixing, and pressing—I consider the product more a collaboration between the plants, whose phenols eagerly begin to act as their own developer prior to any tray treatments, and the fabulously unpredictable emulsions on decades-old papers of unknown provenance.