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