We innovated a 100% plant-paper-based photographic process
A few years back my friend Lindsey Beal gave me a couple mason jars of veggie juices—carrot, spinach, and perhaps beets.
The mystery-jars were for coating papers, then exposing them to sunlight for weeks to create a photograph. That's a super old-school process called anthotype.
May Babcock and Lindsey Beal, Lily of the Valley with Flax, 2024 anthotype (lily of the valley emulsion) on artist-made paper
It'd been several years since we collaborated on a series. The last one we did was called Lamina, and merged my own unusual papermaking techniques with Lindsey's expertise in historical and alternative photographic processes.
Conceptually, each of our work seems quite different from the others'. Lindsey's work has examined things like historical obstetric and gynecological tools, microscopic views of bacterial sexually transmitted infections, and most recently, everyday objects used to raise, nurture, feed, house and clothe children.
My artwork, on the other hand, evokes the plants, seaweeds, waterways, histories, and complexities of place.
What we do have strongly in common is:
1.) a love for hands-on ways of making, and
2.) starting with research as the basis for each series.
How we started A Living Archive
A Living Archive is a collaboration that comes from the overlap of our interests, including:
Anthotypes as a slow, plant-based photo process
Papermaking (of course!!!! 😍)
Post-industrial landscapes, and
Forgotten histories and ecologies of those sites
We began wandering sites along the Blackstone River, which in the 1990s was the most polluted river in the United States, the legacy of textile mills along the waterway. I think wandering and curiosity was a driving force for our new collaboration.
We photographed remnants of industry, picked flowers and plants for pressing, and gathered anthotype emulsion material such as the magenta-pink-toned pokeberry.
May Babcock and Lindsey Beal, Mill 2024 anthotype (pokeberry emulsion) on artist-made paper
Innovating with plants, together
At some point, if I remember correctly, I think asked Lindsey something like, "do you think it would work if we made a paper from really green plants, and exposed that to sunlight to make a photographic print?"
There's certain seaweeds that bleach to white after being washed up high on beach. Why not see if we could echo that process with papers made from seaweed or plants?
And you know what?
Yo, IT WORKED. 🤯
And we're calling this process plantistype.
May Babcock and Lindsey Beal, Pokeberry Leaf on Mugwort and Phragmites, 2025, plantistype (artist-made paper from mugwort and Phragmites australis)
Lindsey printed the first successful plantistype™ using paper made from 100% common reed (Phragmites australis). I remember her texting me with a pic of the print, and then I was suddenly FREAKING OUT with excitement.
Actually, plants always seem to make me unusually excited. 😂🌿
And, you can see this innovative work at the Boston Athenaeum
Lindsey and I are so honored to be having our collaborative series A Living Archive exhibited for the first time ever, thanks to the amazing support of the Boston Athenaeum.
If you're in the Boston, MA area this summer, def stop by—several times if you can—to see our anthotypes and plantistypes.
Why?
Because as these unusual photographs are slowly exposed to UV light, they will poetically change and fade like living things—it's an intentionally ephemeral, temporal exhibition.
Okay, links and deets: ℹ️
A Living Archive
June 10 to September 5, 2025
Opening June 9 at 5:30pm (free)
Boston Athenaeum
10 1/2 Beacon Street, Boston, MA
Please feel free to send this along to family, friends, and colleagues who would love this.