The photographer making art in collaboration with oak trees

His latest work features in a solo exhibition entitled Photosymbiosis: Towards a Method of Photographic Collaboration with England’s Heritage Oak Trees running at Brighton's ONCA Gallery until 3 September.

Currently doing a part-time practice-based PhD in Photography at the University of Brighton, Roe explores relationships between humans and the natural world through traditional and alternative photographic processes, drawing on imaginative forms of ‘collaboration’ with other organisms such as trees.

Roe's work with oaks is split into three projects. Arboreal Encounters is a selection of cyanotypes - a form of photographic printing dating back to the 1840s - in which images of each tree are dyed with oak tannin extracted from the trees themselves. Organic Impressions, meanwhile, is a series of abstract images made using soil taken from each tree’s location, making reference to the hidden underground world that trees navigate independently from human life.

Photographer Epha Roe

Photograph from Perceiving Phytochrome by Epha Roe

Finally, Perceiving Phytochrome imagines how trees ‘see’ the world around them, drawing inspiration from a chemical pigment in their leaves called phytochrome which detects seasonal change through the levels of red light in the atmosphere.

The oaks featured in Roe's photography were chosen from a list of ‘Great British Trees’, a project set up by The Tree Council in 2002 to commemorate the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Each of the chosen trees comes with links to some aspect of human history, which earned them a place on the Tree Council heritage list.

One of the trees featured in Roe's work, for example, is the Queen Elizabeth Oak near the West Sussex village of Lodsworth. Believed to date back to at least the 12th century, legend claims Elizabeth 1 stood under this tree with an arrow drawn, waiting (unsuccessfully) for a stag to be driven within range for her to shoot it.

Recent scientific research has revealed myriad ways that trees exist in their own forms of community. This includes the discovery of their ability to communicate with both other trees and a host of other organisms, using chemical signals, interconnected root systems, and mycorrhizal networks created by fungi.

Epha Roe said: "This exhibition brings together three different modes of symbolic photographic collaboration with trees. By introducing elements of their materiality, and through using their organic functions to think about different ways of making photographs, Photosymbiosis explores how the concept of plant-agency might be both visually represented, and enacted with the plants themselves."

Roe's recent exhibitions include Queer Constellations, a 2021 group exhibition exploring queer approaches to rural life and landscape, held at The Museum of English Rural Life (MERL) in Reading. In Brighton, he was part of the 2020 show North/South at Phoenix Gallery, as well as Body/Nobody, a 2020 group exhibition at Gallery Lock In.

Epha will discuss his work with University of Brighton's Dr Annebella Pollen in a free event at the ONCA Gallery on 1 September starting at 6.30pm.

Epha Roe on Instagram: @ephajroe