Zhenye
Poison
2026 - on going
Poison begins with a private story about three stray cats.
My mother encountered them in the course of her everyday life. They never fully left the street, but instead lived somewhere between wandering and being cared for. They retained their habits of hunting and roaming, while gradually returning to the small shelter my mother had created for them.
Eventually, three became two, and two became one.
Their deaths were connected to rodenticide circulating through the urban environment. Through hunting and foraging, an instinct that once helped them survive became dangerous within a chemically altered landscape.
Rodenticides are deployed to control a designated species, yet poison does not remain within the boundaries assigned to it. Once poisoned bait or contaminated animals re-enter relationships of predation and scavenging, toxicity can move beyond its intended target. Humans may decide where poison is first placed, but cannot fully determine where it will ultimately arrive. Poison moves from the urban environment into the lives of animals, and from the event itself into the material used to produce the photographs.
Then the work begins with this loss of control...
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I use beetroot extract to create an anthotype emulsion and introduce rodenticide directly into the material. Plant pigment, poison, paper, ultraviolet light, and photographic images therefore occupy the same physical surface. Photographs of the rodenticide and the cats emerge slowly through prolonged ultraviolet exposure. Some remain recognizable; others dissolve into faint outlines, stains, and fields of color, while some nearly disappear altogether.
Anthotypes are never permanently fixed.
Even after the initial exposure ends, light continues to act on the organic pigments, causing the image to fade, shift, and gradually disappear.
This instability became part of the work itself.
Photography is often associated with preservation: the attempt to hold onto a moment that has already passed, allowing a body, a presence, or a memory to remain visible.
“ but in these works, photography will fail to preserve, because the image itself has been poisoned.”
2026 - on going
Poison begins with a private story about three stray cats.
My mother encountered them in the course of her everyday life. They never fully left the street, but instead lived somewhere between wandering and being cared for. They retained their habits of hunting and roaming, while gradually returning to the small shelter my mother had created for them.
Eventually, three became two, and two became one.
Their deaths were connected to rodenticide circulating through the urban environment. Through hunting and foraging, an instinct that once helped them survive became dangerous within a chemically altered landscape.
Rodenticides are deployed to control a designated species, yet poison does not remain within the boundaries assigned to it. Once poisoned bait or contaminated animals re-enter relationships of predation and scavenging, toxicity can move beyond its intended target. Humans may decide where poison is first placed, but cannot fully determine where it will ultimately arrive. Poison moves from the urban environment into the lives of animals, and from the event itself into the material used to produce the photographs.
Then the work begins with this loss of control...
---------
I use beetroot extract to create an anthotype emulsion and introduce rodenticide directly into the material. Plant pigment, poison, paper, ultraviolet light, and photographic images therefore occupy the same physical surface. Photographs of the rodenticide and the cats emerge slowly through prolonged ultraviolet exposure. Some remain recognizable; others dissolve into faint outlines, stains, and fields of color, while some nearly disappear altogether.
Anthotypes are never permanently fixed.
Even after the initial exposure ends, light continues to act on the organic pigments, causing the image to fade, shift, and gradually disappear.
This instability became part of the work itself.
Photography is often associated with preservation: the attempt to hold onto a moment that has already passed, allowing a body, a presence, or a memory to remain visible.
“ but in these works, photography will fail to preserve, because the image itself has been poisoned.”