Aindreas Scholz is a German-Irish, London-based photographer and PhD candidate at SEPR, TU Dublin, researching cameraless, ecological photographic practices through the legacy of Anna Atkins. His work merges environmental humanities, archival theory, and care ethics, reactivating historical processes to address the climate crisis, ecological vulnerability, and situated, interdependent modes of knowledge-making.
RESEARCH PROJECT
Unfixed Landscapes
Ecological and Critical Perspectives on Cameraless Photographic Processes
through the Legacy of Anna Atkins
My research reimagines the cyanotype process, first popularised by Anna Atkins (1799–1871), as a contemporary, ecological methodology for engaging with archives and the climate crisis. Using cameraless, analogue, and site-responsive practices, I explore how extractive iron-salt processes can be re-situated as acts of care, repair, and reciprocal exchange with specific environments. The project examines archives as both repositories of knowledge and living entities embedded in ecological cycles. By embedding environmental materials, such as polluted seawater, acidic rain, eroding soil, and plant specimens, into the image-making process, I create works that act as both visual records and ecological imprints. These 'unfixed landscapes' remain mutable, echoing the instability of the climates and ecosystems from which they emerge. My research engages archival theory, environmental humanities, and care ethics to question how material, affective, and conceptual archives shape and are shaped by ecological thought. Through experimental fieldwork, socially engaged workshops, and collaborative research with archives, I investigate how these practices can generate situated, interdependent modes of knowledge-making. As a Visiting Researcher, I would: - Develop a new body of work responding to the theme Archival Entanglements - Host public workshops demonstrating sustainable cyanotype methods, inviting participants to contribute to a living 'ecological archive' of their local environments - Participate in reading groups and talks to share historical, technical, and ethical dimensions of cameraless photography in the Anthropocene - Contribute to the Haunted Archives of Livingness volume with a piece reflecting on care ethics in photographic and archival practice This proposal seeks to bridge historical photographic processes, contemporary ecological concerns, and speculative futures for archives as sites of resistance, healing, and ecological imagination.
Research interests:
Cameraless and ecological photographic practices; archival theory and materiality;
environmental humanities;
care ethics;
interdependence between human and non-human agents in visual culture;
reactivating historical processes for contemporary climate discourse.
Activities
Since 2023, ongoing PhD at SEPR, TU Dublin (Unfixed Landscapes), reimagining Anna Atkins’ cyanotypes through site-specific fieldwork and socially engaged workshops.
Exhibited internationally, including Rotlicht Festival (Vienna), Salon/24 (London), and PhotoIreland FUTURES. Delivered workshops on sustainable printing techniques, integrating local ecological materials.
Professional Experience
- Part-time Lecturer, Uxbridge College (supporting disadvantaged students into creative HE/careers)
- Visiting Artist and Workshop Facilitator, Artlink, Fort Dunree
- Artist-Researcher, developing environmentally focused, archive-informed projects acquired by public collections (Ireland, UK, Germany, Belgium)
- Collaborations with curators, archives, and communities to explore ecological vulnerability through analogue processes
