Tina Rowe (UK)
Residency at The British School at Athens
These photographs of the school, library, and hostel, which are all in the same building, were taken during a research residency in January–February 2024. I am here as part of my PhD research at Chelsea College of Arts. My practice-based research investigates a collaborative approach to portraiture in order to make likenesses of transracial adoptees like myself. One of the processes I am exploring is colour reversal on paper to create unique analogue images. To achieve this, I have had to learn to use a 10x8 camera, and I am using this residency as an opportunity to learn to think about image-making in this new way. As I don't have access to my usual darkroom, I have been making negative prints onto paper and reversing the scans in Photoshop.
I've found the school endlessly interesting; the archive is fascinating, especially the incidental photographs taken by the archaeologists on digs in the 1920s and 30s. The school is a curious place steeped in a colonial view of history. However, the current research, and the ideas that underpin this research, methods, and even the areas of study are radically different from what I expected. The place is inhabited by serious scholars investigating ancient migration, mining, commerce, domestic practices, and education in the ancient world. Nobody is digging for treasure or scouring for kings. I've learned a lot about how histories are repurposed and how other histories are lost. This has given me space to think about my own fractured identity and what I have made of it. It is already seeping into my research.
The video is included because I see it as a metaphor for my own developing understanding of the camera and its implications as a medium to express ideas that link the experience of being transracially adopted and using the tools and materials of analogue photography as a framework that I am exploring as part of my PhD research.
The images I am submitting are of places in the school. The extremes of dark and light are facets of using paper as a negative. I especially like the flare caused by halation, resulting from light spreading on the paper. It wouldn't happen if I had used a negative film. This is representative of my practice. I find that problem-solving in the darkroom always leads to further ideas and I am very interested in how my own growing understanding and competence with the apparatus and chemistry has solidified into important foundations for new work and is contributing new knowledge.
Tina Rowe's practice explores the material properties of light-sensitive chemistry on different substrates. Her work extends across multiple disciplines including sculpture, film, and performance.
She was a founder member of the e5process collective who ran an experimental darkroom space geared towards the needs of artists, offering black and white, colour and alternative processes.
She is currently a PhD student at Chelsea College of Art, London, undertaking practice-based research into the tension between surface and process in analogue photography as a methodology to reveal and explore the identities of transracial adoptees. This research stems from her own experiences as a transracially adopted Anglo/Somali.
