Stig Marlon Weston (Norway)
Empirical

“Empirical” is made on travels through the Amazon rainforest, where I have worked with climate scientists and local environmental activists to depict their scientific viewpoint of the world around us.

I participated in the Brazilian artist residency Labverde that invites international artists into a research station in one of the world's oldest rainforest nature reserves. Afterwards I made contact with local activist groups and travelled through parts of the rainforest where human activity has inflicted changes to the natural landscape.

Working with cameraless photography, I make so-called lumen prints by exposing light-sensitive analog photographic paper to sunlight outdoors. This method creates photographic imprints directly on the paper, showing the water, soil and plant life of the Amazon. These photographs are collected in ways inspired by the scientific work method, using randomized mapping and comparable places of interest.

The photographs are made as datasets, where they show a certain variety, but then also are compared to other sets, showing differences that might not be visible in a single normal photograph. The photographic paper reacts to humidity, pressure and contact with a range of different chemical compounds. Differences between the untouched nature reserve and the landscape of a logging camp, chemical spill site or dammed-up river delta can be discovered visually in these images, without the viewer having to be familiar with scientific terminology and methods of measurement.

Stig Marlon Weston works as a photographer and artist in Oslo, Norway. Having studied professional photography and worked as a freelance photographer for a number of years, he cares about the fundamental questions of photography and memory, interpretation and truth.

His work is in the collection of the Preus Norwegian National Museum of Photography and he exhibits with photo festivals and galleries in Norway and abroad.

Expanding the idea of the genre of landscape photography, he uses analog photomaterials to make cameraless photographs that interpret the world with new eyes. To share the joy of analog photography, he also runs the largest community darkroom in Norway and leads the Nordic Analog Network of open community darkrooms and a shared artist residency program.