Holly Birtles, Ārun and Sojam Joshi were selected to gather in Chennai, India, in December 2024 to be residents at the Chennai Photo Biennale Community Darkroom for 6 weeks. Working across different processes, the artists demonstrated the evolving possibilities of alternative and analogue photographic techniques, often challenging traditional ideas. These projects draw on the darkroom as a space for meditative introspection, experimental discovery, friendship and camaraderie.
All projects culminated in Alt:Analog, an exhibition part of Chennai Photo Biennale Edition 4. Open from 16 January to 15 February, Alt:Analog presented a diverse exploration of material, process and concept.
The Darkroom Residency is the result of a partnership between CPB Foundation and Photoworks, supported by the British Council.
Holly shares her experience below:
In Chennai, I developed a series titled Fighting Fish. During the darkroom residency, I reflected on an ongoing body of work inspired by the Thames River London and Estuary in Kent, Essex and Suffolk, where performers and artists contemplate their choreographed roles as ‘Thames Monsters.’ In Chennai, I responded to the Adyar and Cooum river, identifying parallels linked to sentimentality, dedication, care, and destruction.
I photographed parts of the two rivers, including Marina Beach where Cooum River met The Bay of Bengal. The photographs were shot on a medium format analogue camera and later integrated into a complex process including AI image inputs, negatives, digital negatives and a range of experimental dark room techniques which often aimed to interfere and subvert standard processes, for example: solarisation, fogging, multiple exposures and more – often transforming digital simulations into experimental silver gelatin prints. Many images were used as a backdrop to digitised monsters, including responsive performance imagery, self self-portraits, textures and landscapes.
During the residency, I produced a large wall installation consisting of 100 images, which was included in the Alt:Analog exhibition at Forum Gallery. My aim was to create layered imagery that embodied monstrosity, intertwining beauty and magnificence with destruction, mud, waste, life, and death. The concept of ‘fight’ was explored through performative examinations reminiscent of autopsies and directed body language during constructed performances. The physicality of these gestures conveyed an ecological struggle—a lack of oxygen and growing frustration with governmental inefficiencies related to new infrastructure. The repetitive nature of Midjourney, which generates multiple versions of the same image, was depicted within the Forum Gallery installation; the unified and repetitive display reflected the AI interface, depicting multiple versions of the same image or ‘monster.’
I thoroughly enjoyed being in Chennai and working with the Dark Room team at CPB. There were many artists to meet and exhibitions to visit, all organized as part of The Chennai Photo Biennale. The Dark Room team and I explored alternative display methods, such as multi-panel prints informed by projection, and had a great time experimenting and discussing the work in progress. Our conversations about monsters, rivers, and many other topics! initiated an exciting and productive experience – this was fun, collaborative and so rare to have the time to reflect and talk about different ways to approach a project. It was great to work with artists too, they explored entirely differing ideas and processes yet we came together through a commitment to analogue processes.
Moving forward, I plan to develop these multi-panel works further and generate additional performance responses related to rivers—considering experiences of place, sentimentality, myth, and ecologies. The residency has helped me to realise new installation methods which I anticipate becoming even more complex through scale and layering.
