This post forms part of a monthly series that documents the plants growing at The Angel of the North through a series of cyanotypes.
The month of June has brought into flower the different grasses that grow in the field on which The Angel of the North stands. Attending to these plants requires a different scale of vision from looking at The Angel, as well as adjusting the gaze downward. Cyanotypes of the grasses bring out the sculptural beauty of their forms, which are easily overlooked.
Image Credit: Anne Whitehead
I wrote in my post on the month of May about the significance for the memorial site of dwelling with the ordinariness of things, and this month’s homage to the grasses that grow there continues in this vein. These plants are not exceptional or extraordinary, but looking at them closely reveals their distinctive beauty. I have often used the term grassroots memorial to describe the memorial in the trees at The Angel. This phrase, which registers that the memorial site is rooted in the spontaneous, collective activities of ordinary people, has its origin in the roots of grasses as a fundamental layer from which growth takes place.
Image Credit: Anne Whitehead
The Sounding the Angel project documents the memorial site through sound. I have written in this blog of the rustling of the leaves in the trees as one of the defining sounds of the memorial site in the summer months. Although less audible, the whispering of the grasses can also be heard alongside them, as they variously bend or shake in the wind.
The images of the grasses above have all been made using the dry cyanotype method, which involves placing the plant onto paper when the chemicals that develop the image have dried. The grace and elegance of these cyanotypes prompted me also to develop images of the grasses using the wet cyanotype method, which I have described in a previous post.
This technique enables a greater range of effects, even if it is less predictable in outcome.
Image credit: Anne Whitehead
This image captures the feel of the grasses swaying in the wind, and turmeric sprinkled onto the wet paper enhances its sense of life and movement.
Image credit: Anne Whitehead
Here, the textured background has been created by placing a layer of cling film onto the glass during the exposure of the image.
Image credit: Anne Whitehead
Here’s another variation, which combines the two techniques. The pooling of vinegar spray on the cling film has caused a rich variety of blues to emerge.
The cyanotype methods differ in their effects, but they both capture the structural beauty of the grasses. These plants define the site of The Angel in June, and this post both captures and celebrates the range of different species that grow there.
This post forms part of a monthly series that documents the plants growing at The Angel of the North through a series of cyanotypes.
In my posts for January and February, I observed that the plants growing at The Angel site were largely the sculptural grasses and seed heads from last year’s flowers. The site is exposed to the high winds of the winter storms and these plants have bent and bowed as successive storms have passed through. Low to the ground, they are less vulnerable to damage than the trees of the copse that forms the main memorial site. Some of the branches of the outer trees of the copse have blown down, and the memorial tributes hanging from them have been scattered by the winds across the ground nearby.
In the field surrounding The Angel, catkins are forming on the trees: an unmistakable sign that the season is turning. This Spring is warm but wet and the ground is muddy underfoot, especially on the path that runs through the trees. Visitors to The Angel linger to look at the tributes at the entrance to the copse, but do not often venture further in.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
Those visitors who do walk through the copse are rewarded by the sight of clumps of daffodils growing under the trees. These are a cultivated variety of miniature daffodils and their location beneath the trees amid the memorial tributes suggests that they have been planted in a memorial capacity. Their yellow blooms glow against the muddy paths and represent a sign of hope in the aftermath of recent storms.
Visitors regularly leave floral tributes in the trees, tying them to the trunks with the florists’ wrapping still around them or placing them on the ground next to other memorial objects. Flowers will also sometimes be left at the feet of The Angel. This form of tribute echoes the act of leaving flowers at a grave, or the tying of flowers to benches or railings at other grassroots memorial sites. Sometimes the flowers at The Angel are accompanied by messages, while other tributes are left anonymously.
The daffodils planted in the trees at The Angel represent a different kind of gesture. Their annual flowering suggests that The Angel is seen as a more lasting or permanent memorial site that could be visited over a number of years. The flowers, interspersed in clumps throughout the trees and clustered at the centre of the copse, do not belong to any one person but speak, instead, of an anonymity-amid-the-collective that characterises many of the tributes left at the site.
The flowering of the daffodils speaks to the ephemerality of many of the tributes left at The Angel. Every time I visit the memorial it is different: objects have been laid down or removed, or sometimes they have changed position within the site. As this monthly series of cyanotype blog posts documents, the site also changes with the seasons. In March, the daffodils are briefly visible in the trees and become a prominent feature of the memorial site, although they would pass unnoticed at any other time of the year. In asking what The Angel represents for those who leave memorial tributes there, it is therefore also important to consider when it is being visited. The area in the trees feels very different according to the season, and even to the time of day. Documenting such a site accordingly necessitates a slow methodology that consists of repeated visits over an extended period of time. Only then is it possible to capture the ephemeral and fleeting aspects of the site, alongside its more stable and permanent features.
This post forms part of a monthly series that documents the plants growing at The Angel of the North through a series of cyanotypes.
On a visit to Dundee, I discovered the work of cyanotype artist Alexander Hamilton. After studying the process at Edinburgh College of Art, Hamilton chose cyanotype as an art form that enabled him to explore and interpret nature. I came across his work in the form of a piece of public art, ‘Seed Chamber‘, which stands tall outside the Dundee Science Centre. Although the installation has faded in colour, it is still possible to appreciate the design of delicate seedheads that float up the panels, as if blown skyward by the wind. The tall glass sculpture was originally illuminated from within, to symbolise the importance of light in the life cycle of plants, and it also references the process of making the cyanotype, with the image exposed by placing the chemically treated paper in sunlight. I found a book dedicated to Hamilton’s work in the bookshop of the nearby Victoria and Albert Museum, and I bought it in order to learn more about this important practitioner of cyanotype.
In Search of the Blue Flower is named after one of Hamilton’s own projects, the title of which references the Celtic folk tradition of an elusive blue flower, symbol of the endless pursuit of something that lies always just beyond reach. In her ‘Introduction’ to the volume, Sara Stevenson highlights Hamilton’s making of the cyanotype not merely as a means of documenting a specimen, but as a complex interaction with the plant and its environment:
The plant is laid on the paper which will capture an image of its delicate complexity; at the same time, sap and colouring may leach into the paper and interact with the chemistry. The erratic sun in Scotland defines the image – a silhouette combining shadow with transparency, drifting round the edges, and even showing us inside the plant. The chemical reaction follows the light, and the atmosphere – dry or damp. This is not simply what we might see of the plant but a response to its nature. (p. 7)
Hamilton’s cyanotypes further emphasise the plant’s unique ecology by using fresh water drawn from a nearby natural source to develop the image. (The paper is immersed in water to wash away the chemicals, and the contact causes a chemical reaction which turns the paper deep blue.)
Hamilton contributes an essay to the book, recollecting his first extensive experimentation with cyanotype on the Scottish island of Stroma in 1973. This island in the Pentland Firth had been uninhabited since 1962, and Hamilton offered to conduct a survey of the plants on Stroma for the Edinburgh Botanic Garden. He stayed on the island for a year, and making cyanotypes was combined with the daily tasks of obtaining food, firewood, and fresh water. Hamilton writes of his survey of the plants on the island:
We divided a map of Stroma into quadrants and explored the island systematically, documenting plants and mosses. The island was small and flat, but it was extraordinarily varied and visually stunning. The plants on the island would vary from vast areas of blue flowers, with other patches showing swathes of red flowers. (p. 17)
The experience of being fully immersed in the landscape gave Hamilton a deep engagement with, and knowledge of, the plants’ environment and this laid the basis for all his subsequent work.
In 2007, Hamilton completed a residency at Brantwood, the former home of John Ruskin in the Lake District. He lived in Ruskin’s house, and the library and gardens were available to him every day. Hamilton focused on Ruskin’s eleven-year study Proserpina: Studies of Wayside Flowers (1875-1886); here, Ruskin shares Hamilton’s commitment to an understanding of the humble wayside plant. Ruskin was also profoundly drawn to the colour blue; like Hamilton, he saw an intense blue, such as that of the cyanotype, as a sign of the spirituality that can be generated by a close relationship to nature.
Photo credit: Anne Whitehead
My own practice of developing cyanotypes at The Angel of the North also extends over the course of a year, capturing the plants that grow on the site across the different seasons. The uneven blue of my February cyanotypes witnesses the fluctuating light of the winter months, and the grasses leave their own residues of moisture and seeds on the paper, the traces of which are visible in the developed print. I used rainwater collected in my own garden to develop the image.
Unlike Hamilton, I did not approach the task of recording the plants at The Angel by systematically dividing the site into segments. My intention was not to produce a scientific survey, but rather to create an aesthetic record of the plants that grow on the memorial site. The creation of the cyanotypes represented a commitment to attend carefully to the flora and fauna of The Angel. As in January, the plants that I encountered in February were predominantly grasses and dried seedheads. The cyanotype celebrates the elegance and sculptural beauty of these commonplace and humble plants .
Hamilton’s tribute to the unattainable blue flower resonates with the broader context of this project. By leaving everyday ritual objects in the trees at The Angel of the North, visitors invest the site with spiritual significance. The process of making the cyanotype likewise transforms the ordinary into the intangible, and signals the quest for a connection with that which lies just beyond our senses.
References
Alexander Hamilton, ‘Stroma’, In Search of the Blue Flower: Alexander Hamilton and the Art of Cyanotype (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022), pp. 17-19.
Sara Stevenson, ‘Introduction’, In Search of the Blue Flower: Alexander Hamilton and the Art of Cyanotype (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022), p. 7.
