Final Project for the Level 9 Professional Diploma in Art and Ecology at NCAD.
The Bullock Harbour Unscientific Photo Lab is travelling, performative, and playful scientific darkroom lab that Maria set up in the Trident Scuba Aqua Clubhouse in Bullock Harbour in South Dublin from March to June 2025.
She wanted to slow down and spend more time with the seaweeds of Bullock Harbour, approaching them with greater care and patience, spending longer periods in the water to observe, learn and understand these often overlooked plants.
She decided to explore sustainable and ecological alternatives to conventional darkroom development. Traditional darkroom practices rely on chemical developers and fixers that are harmful to marine environments and often end up being poured down the sink. She wanted to change this process to be more considerate of the underwater ecosystems and coastal places she was documenting.
She began experimenting with developing 35mm film and super 8 film shot both above and below the water, using seaweeds, seawater, and other natural materials.
She also experimented with another cameraless technique called Lumen Printing. She was drawn to the Lumen process as it allowed her to document the seaweed species of Bullock Harbour in a way that mirrored their own conditions for life, sunlight and saltwater, while also being more environmentally conscious. This method also echoes historical scientific practices of collecting and preserving seaweed specimens, for Herbariums.
Working outdoors, documenting the harbour above and below the water, developing film, and creating lumen prints with seaweed, led her to think more ecologically about the methods she was using to create these photographs. She began to describe this approach as the ‘en plein air darkroom model’. By working outside, she was challenging the extractive, chemically intensive nature of traditional darkrooms, which are often disconnected from the environments they depict; instead adopting a more caring, ecological way of creating analogue photographic representations of landscape in the landscape itself.
To further align her practice with ecological thinking, She chose to travel to Bullock Harbour in a slower, more sustainable way throughout the project. She cycled there on her old post bike, from the industrial inner city of Dublin to the more sedate, coastal environment of Bullock Harbour. Cycling the 30km round trip created a tangible shift in pace from her previous traffic-heavy car journeys to the Harbour, deepening her connection to both places and reinforcing the embodied transition between them.
Bullock Harbour Unscientific Photo Lab (35mm film photos developed in Bladderwrack Seaweed)
Lumen prints of the Seaweed Species present in Bullock Harbour
Lumen prints made in and around the Harbour itself with the process documented by 35mm film developed ecologically with bladderwrack seaweed.
Collection of 35mm film photographs developed en plein air outside in Bullock Harbour with Bladderwrack seaweed developer documenting the Harbour.
Exhibitions
Salon of Diúltaíodh, Gallery X, Dublin (2025)
Art and Ecology Postgrad Show, NCAD Gallery, Dublin (2025)
