I was recently compelled to comment on a post I ran across on the A&D+ blog. It picked up a release from boingboing about an artist Binh Danh who has elegantly made artworks using the patterns created in leaves during the processs of photosynthesis .
Though the images and constructions are intriguing and may be the first time used in the context of contemporary art, the technique was not likely “invented” by Danh. Howard Gest of Indiana University recalls how the technique was developed by Hans Molisch around the same time that Gregor Mendel’s notions of inheritance were gaining acceptance (Photosynthesis Research 30: 49-59, 1991). Molisch’s “starch pictures” demonstrate the process of photosynthesis and can be created by staining the starch granules (1914, 1920; cited in Gest 1991).
Following Gest (1991):
Place a Geranium Plant in darkness for two days to deplete the starch reserves. Then, remove a leaf with its attached petiole from the plant and place on a black cloth moistened with a dilute solution of baking soda (to provide some CO2 for photosynthesis). Sandwich the leaf and the cloth between two glass plates with the petiole protruding and immersed in water. Expose the leaf to a high intensity image for at least an hour. In order to reveal the pattern of starch granules produced by photosynthesis, the chlorophyll and other pigments can be extracted in a beaker containing boiling 80% alcohol. The leaf can then be stained with iodine. The result is an image for which an analogy is created between silver granules and starch granules.
The trick that Dahn may have figured out is how to fix the images. Photosynthetically-produced images have a tendency to fade after awhile. If he has figured it out, I hope he publishes the techniques somewhere.
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