Sustainable Photography - Lumen Print making & Developing with Plants based chemicals.

Sustainable Photography Workshop - Lumen Print making & Intro to Developing Prints with Plants

morning workshop 11am - 2pm - Lumen Print Workshop

Explore the camera-less techniques of lumen prints using photographic paper and the power of the sun. Artist and tutor Julie Corcoran will guide you through lumen printing in a sustainable way using expired photographic paper and gathered plant materials.

What is Lumen Printing?

In 1834, William Fox Talbot experimented with coating paper with silver nitrate, which darkened when exposed to light. He used this discovery to create "photogenic drawings" by placing leaves and other botanical specimens on the paper and exposing them to the sun, leaving the areas blocked by the objects white while the rest of the paper darkened. Reactions occur between the photographic paper and the internal chemistry (polyphenols) in the plants creating unique colours and patterns.

afternoon workshop 2.30pm - 4.30pm - Intro to Developing images with Plants

What is a plant-based developer?

All plants contain polyphenols, when extracted these polyphenols chemically reduce light-exposed silver halide crystals in the film emulsion into visible metallic silver, which forms the image. When combined with Vitamin C (anti-oxidant) and household soda crystals (pH balancer) they form an ascorbic based developer. Artist and tutor Julie Corcoran will guide participants in a film photography processing, making a plant based developer and using that developer to develop negatives that will be digitally scanned so participants will have a paperless copy of their images to cherish.

Ascorbic based developer was patented in the 1940s by Arnold Weissberger and Hugo A Kurtzner and held by Kodak. It was an important discovery in traditional film photography and is now the basis of sustainable film developing.

Materials: we will make prints in the first session to develop with the plant developer. 

Artists bio:

Julie Corcoran lives in Cavan and is based at Bó Studios, Dundalk. She works through the mediums of analogue and digital photography researching alternative photographic processes and low-toxic photo-chemistry.

Julie’s most recent awards include a two week darkroom residency in the Bristol Folkhouse Darkroom in January 2026 supported by Cavan Arts Office. In November 2024 she was awarded an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Bursary Award from Louth County Council Arts Office to support her research in the darkroom.

This culminated in her solo exhibition, ‘It Matters’ which ran from the 7th November - 2nd December 2025 in the Downtown Hub, Clanbrassil Street, Dundalk featuring traditional silver gelatine prints alongside photographic work made with low toxic photo chemistry including a cyanotype of Brigid’s Well made on a kombucha scoby, soil chromatography, phytograms, sacred cyanotypes and chlorophyll print made on a laurel leaf.