Recently I was invited to take part in Amoeba – a photographic exhibition celebrating community and featuring photographers from across Greater Manchester. What first grabbed me when we met was that a large proportion of the group were Socially Engaged photographers and artists. Something I do not consider myself to be. I’m a bit of a loner when it comes to my photography and my network is rather niche and limited. So I was already struggling with my imposter syndrome, let alone worried about producing a piece of work for the exhibition. As many will know, I do not keep a portfolio or body of work for exhibition, and often edit my work with a hammer at the end of a year. So I tend to produce work on an as needed basis. I think I work better this way, and as a lifelong procrastinator find I work better with a that little bit of pressure.
AMOEBA is a group exhibition by photographers from across Greater Manchester. The title of the show is inspired by community worker Tony Wright who said, ‘Community is an Amoeba, it can be anything you want it to be’. This group of photographers have come together to create an exhibition exploring this idea as a way of connecting, collaborating, sharing practice and learning from each other. The exhibition is co-produced by Hatters Editions, a specialist print lab based in Stockport and Stockroom, a new creative and cultural space opening in Stockport’s Merseyway Shopping Centre in Spring 2025. This project is part-funded by the UK government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
Where: Pink Studios 2nd Floor, Hilton House, Stockport SK1 3NA
When: Friday 1st November – closes 15th November.
“This is very much open to interpretation- From photographing a lack of community to investigating how communicates are formed, or the essence of community to your local places and faces and everything in between. Remember ‘…it can be anything that you want it to be’, so be playful and inventive with either work already made or new work. Most of all, have fun!“
It wasn’t until October that I forced myself to sit down, with a mug of tea, and come up with a plan of action. Breaking it down into what “community” can mean to me and to others. After a few hours of getting nowhere, I surprised myself when the answer was sitting there right in front of me. Tea!
Tea has long been a vital element in the building of community and aiding social interactions across various cultures around the world. Whether that be the formal Japanese tea ceremony or the bustling tea shops of Morocco, tea serves as a medium for enhancing relationships and strengthening communal ties.
In the UK, tea time is a deeply ingrained social tradition. This brief pause in a busy day helps us gain much needed social interactions, from colleagues sharing the days events during a work break, to families catching up at home on life’s events. And as some feel more and more disconnected in this digital world, tea remains highly significant in its ability to join us together, allowing many to feel a sense of belonging and brings a healthy connection to a societal group. So, if it’s a mug of builders tea or a bone china cup of Darjeeling that takes your fancy, you are never alone in appreciating the community value of a good old cup of tea. (Thanks to ChatGPT for most of that as I’m also a terrible writer”
Actually, thinking back to my first meeting with the Amoeba group, the very first question asked when I arrived was… “Fancy a brew?”
I took that as my starting point to produce a print for the exhibition.
And what better or easier way to visualise tea than the teabag, although I suppose that has a lot to do with social standing and upbringing. I did dabble with tea stained cup rings at first as that can even be achieved without any photographic involvement, but the solitary tea bag, discarded so easily after a brew, seemed a little more iconic.
I digitised a teabag with transmitted light, then produced an acetate digital negative, contact printed as a 1:1 reproduction cyanotype print, and then toned/stained the cyanotype from its usual blue hues to a more palatable colour with the tea leaves from the said tea bags.
Staining or toning a cyanotype can be straightforward, but contrast control and hue is very much a challenge. I could have gone for a standard, soaked in tea look but as always I get easily distracted with, what if I do this, what if I do that. At first I was concerned about the paper base also toning along with the print, so I experimented with a variety of methods to provide a cooler print with much less paper toning. Result seen above. The dilemma this then raised is which final print to exhibit?
Here are a variety of toned prints made with different papers, a number of bleaches, various bleach times, different strengths and durations of tea toning, and even an additional Hydrogen Peroxide bath between stages. There are some subtle changes and some larger shifts but I wanted to make sure I removed the blue, as I’ve never been a fan.
Some have raised the question that these are stained rather than toned. Technically, yes they are, and I appreciate terminology can be misused, but to me when something is stained it’s usually by accident especially in relation to tea stains, where something that has been toned has been do so intentionally. So I’ll call this a tea toned cyanotype.
I also found that a final wash in boiling water helped clear the paper “staining” and change the hues of the print a little further to what I was looking for.
I have to thank Angie and Pipa of Creative Spin for providing some incite into print choice for exhibition. I’m glad to say they reaffirmed my choice of a warmer tea inspired look rather then the cooler tones of the later experimental prints. And I refrained from using any reference to “CommuniTea” regardless how tempting that may be.
Exhibited as a 7x7cm 1:1 reproduction in an A3 wooden frame with a window mount.
Title: “Fancy a brew?” Initialled and dated.
If you get a chance, pop along and take a look. It’s on until the 15th Novemeber.