About

In 2010, I was awarded a commission from Chrysalis Arts as part of their ‘Celebrating Place’ project. This was the start of a new body of work based on the forests of the North York Moors National Park, producing a series of carbon transfer photographs using 8 x 10-inch sheet film with my  Deardorff field camera.

These photographs of trees are made from carbon dust from the trees themselves. The images explore an organic cycle using a traditional process, hence ‘Carbon to Carbon’. 8 x10 inch negatives were made to produce these prints. The blacks within each print were produced with a formula of Indian ink and ground charcoal. 

My ‘photo-charcoal prints’, as I like to call them, aim to encapsulate the beauty and vulnerability of our forests as I see them. The unpredictability of carbon dust embedded in each print has created a unique tonal scale that I can never repeat. This makes each print as individual and fragile as the woodland I have chosen to photograph.

DAVID CHALMERS  b. 1964

1984  Studied Design Photography, Blackpool and The Fylde College

EXHIBITIONS

2023 Squaring The Circles, curated by Zelda Cheatle, Scarborough Art Gallery, 4th March – 1st May 2023

2019 #LIFE, La Chapelle de l’Hôpital à Pornic, France

2018  TERRITOIRE-S, Scarborough / Pornic, France

2017  Salt & Cyan, Joe Cornish Gallery, Northallerton

2016  Natural Selection, Inspired by…gallery, Danby

2015  MONO, Gallery at Woodend, Scarborough

2015  SOL8, Gallery at Woodend, Scarborough

2012  Carbon to Carbon, Gallery at Woodend, Scarborough

2011  Moors and Coast, Pannett Art Gallery, Whitby

2009  Featured artist, South Street Gallery, North Yorkshire

2006  Unfamiliar Place, Scarborough Art Gallery, North Yorkshire

1997  Scottish Landscapes, Silver Light Gallery, Carmel, California

1995  Light Years, Woodlands Art Gallery, London

COMMISSIONS

2000  Forest for Scotland, a stamp for the Royal Mail Millennium Collection

1993  Commissioned by The Tower of London to creatively photograph the complete Crown Jewels Collection

AWARDS

2010  Celebrating Place, Chrysalis Arts

2006  Arts Council funding for Unfamiliar Place

2001  Design and Art Direction Award, Forest for Scotland won a silver award for Best Design Photography