Site  Reciprocity

Installed at Brand X City of sydney Studios:
119 Bathurst Street Sydney

October 2025 - January 2026

Printed collaboratively in the photographic darkroom, Site Reciprocity explores the potential of a reciprocal relationship between photography and site. In this project Isobel Markus-Dunworth and Remi Siciliano from The Darkroom Social have foraged for organic materials (seaweed, weeds and fallen bark) from local sites around Australia’s Eastern coastline. These have been extracted and transformed into working analogue developers used to process photographs that were shot on film over a shared summer and time spent walking on the coast of Cornwall in Southern England. Prints made using this experimental chemistry bear material markings of the extracted elements - rendered in fluctuating contrast, tonal range, density and stain. The artists enter into an active collaboration with sites visited, materials collected, and photographic surfaces. The boundaries of individual authorship and the separation of sites collapse through an entanglement of processes and shared workflows in making the images.

The photographs are accompanied by a botanical sculpture made by Luemma Pilcher at Date Night Studio which has been made from dried seaweed, florals that otherwise would have gone to waste and fallen palm husks.