July 2025 Newsletter
Ancient Light // XYZ Books

I am pleased to announce that my Ancient Light book is now available to purchase online from XYZ Books.

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What to make of Melanie King’s photographs of the stars, which make up the extensive series ‘Ancient Light’? They have none of the glamour of NASA’s enhanced astronomical photographs and cannot repeat the exactitude of the powerful telescopes which constantly map the universe. Rather, they are photographs rooted in the earth’s surface , emphasising our smallness against the infinity of space. This is what we see, insists Melanie King, aligning herself perhaps with Plath’s vision of the tired and bedraggled stars glimpsed in the night sky over England . And to see them like this, to acknowledge the power of their travelled light, we celebrate the fact that we are part of this, moving , vibrant specks in a history as long as time.
Professor Val Williams, 2024.

Ancient Light comprises analogue astronomical photographs of the night sky, often produced in remote locations away from light pollution. The project arises from King’s practice-based PhD Ancient Light: Rematerialising The Astronomical Image, completed at the Royal College of Art in 2024. In this book, King highlights the connections between light emitted from deep within the cosmos, photographic materials and the ecology of Earth. The book includes an essay by Professor Val Williams and an introduction by Dr Melanie King.

Photographs: Melanie King
Texts: Melanie King & Val Williams
Graphic Design: Joana Durães
Prepress: Pedro Guimarães
Production: Tiago Casanova
Printing: XYZ Press
Binding: Gráfica Manuel Barbosa & Filhos

2025
96 pages
20 x 28 cm
Softcover with
Digital Print
First edition
200 copies

Residency at Passen-gers, London

This month, I will start a residency at Passen-gers at The Brunswick Centre in London. I will be in London at least once a week from the end of July until the beginning of September 2025, and will be available for coffees while I’m in residence! Whilst at Passengers, I will be developing the In Praise of Raw Data project with Julie Hill and Dr Claudia Mignone.

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Passengers is a site-specific curatorial project, conceived and curated by Julie Hill, in partnership with Gauld Architecture. The series that explores the historical, social and material contexts of various sites and architecture. For its inaugural series artists presented work that explored the real and imaginative associations of The Brunswick Centre – a Modernist, mixed residential and commercial development in Bloomsbury, London – which is also our headquarters. The series has since expanded to include off-site exhibitions, residencies and publications.

The title Passengers references the 1975 film The Passenger by Michelangelo Antonioni that features the Brunswick Centre as a location and exploits it as a powerful mise-en-scene. The plot follows a journalist who assumes the identity of a dead businessman while working on a documentary in Chad, unaware that he is impersonating an arms dealer with connections to the rebels in the current civil war. This notion of a ‘passenger’ as someone who inhabits transient identities and spaces, relates to how each artist is rendered a passenger within the larger exhibition structure. This structure is generative and multi-directional, allowing different ideas, themes and narratives to emerge, overlap and intersect, creating dialogue with each other over time.

The Brunswick Centre is a grade II listed residential and shopping centre designed by Patrick Hodgkinson in the mid-1960s and has an interesting history. It’s often misinterpreted as a Brutalist megastructure and likened to a bunker or space-ship from sci-fi movie set – in contrast to the architect’s vision: ‘…it was to be a village, not a megastructure, and never ‘Brutalist’, but would rather create a poetic construct of feel and not look…’. Inspired by Existentialist philosophy, features such as the cascading glass facades of the ‘winter gardens’ were to give contemplative views of open skies ‘… allow[ing] an engagement with an existential awareness of self in the world.’

In 2006 the Brunswick reopened after extensive renovation works that fulfilled some of Hodgkinson’s original specifications.

The inaugural series was supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Duotone Cyanotype Workshop
Land Art Agency - Online

8 August, 2pm UK time
10 August, 6pm UK time
£45 - Book Here. (Online Workshop)

I have recently taken time out from leading in-person and online workshops to develop new processes, after repeating botanical cyanotype toning and plant based film developer workshops for many years.

However, I am now pleased to say that I am offering a duotone (two colour) cyanotype workshop online with Land Art Agency. Find out more on the Land Art Collective website, linked above.

Symbiosis Exhibition in Bristol
Funded by the the Richard and Siobhán Coward Foundation

I will be co-curating the Symbiosis Liquid Exhibition, opening 1 August 2025.

The Symbiosis: Liquid exhibition will take place at Bristol Folk House, curated by Harri Harrison, Ky Lewis, myself & Sophie Sherwood This is the 4th Symbiosis exhibition organised by the London Alternative Photography Collective Symbiosis: Liquid examines liquid as both subject matter and process relating to ecology and alternative photography processes, which often requires liquid in its process. This exhibition has been supported by the Richard and Siobhán Coward Foundation. This exhibition was selected by open call via Curatorspace.

‘Symbiosis III’ is an evolving collection of works by members of the London Alternative Photography Collective, exploring the relationship between image makers, the more-than-human, and alternative photographic processes.

What does it mean to be in relationship with a landscape or a plant for extended periods of time – to witness the interplay between individual species within their ecosystems? What is the role of artistic testimony when witnessing symbiosis within these relationships?

Whether by process or theme, this collection of works documents interspecies relationships – including those between humans and non-humans. Photographic and momentary, they are mid-relationship – we can only guess the before and after.

This collective brings together artists from diverse disciplines working together, exchanging ideas and techniques related to sustainable practices.

This exhibition considers those connections between symbiosis and alternative photography, and asks if nature is a collaborator or a commodity in alternative photography processes.

How do we bear witness to symbiotic relationships between different species, alongside our responsibility to acknowledge that the true definition of symbiosis is both parasitic and mutualistic? Much like alternative photographic processes, balance and equilibrium are essential to symbiosis.

Artists:

Catriona Gray
Sloane Warren
Rachael Allain
Kit Martin
Vanessa Short
James Mark Brown
Katie Lou McCabe
Holly Gupta
Megan Ringrose
Rowan Collinson
Zara Carpenter
Elise Wouters
Riya Panwar
LJ Furner
Crisia Constantine
Lenka Rayn H
Grace Perry
Laura Ward
Anna Kroeger
Jeroen Cavents
Laura de Moxom
Ky Lewis
Harri Harrison
Sophie Sherwood

Exhibition information:

Venue: Bristol Folk House

Dates: Exhibition dates: Friday 1st August – Friday 29th August

Opening times: https://www.bristolfolkhouse.co.uk/contact-us

Opening night: 1 Aug 6-9pm
Workshops @ Bristol Folkhouse Darkroom: 2 Aug (To be announced)
Talk & Closing event: 29th Aug 5pm

Poster Image: Grace Perry

London Alt Photo July Social
HackelBury Fine Art // Landscape & Alchemy

Join us at 3pm 30 July, at HackelBury Fine Art, 4 Launceston Pl, London W8 5RL

We will meet at HackelBury Fine Art to see the exhibition Landscape and Alchemy, a duo show of Katja Liebmann and Nadezda Nikolova.

Following this, we will head for a drink & chat at The Queens Arms, 30 Queen’s Gate Mews, South Kensington, London SW7 5QL

‘Landscape and Alchemy brings together the evocative works of Katja Liebmann and Nadezda Nikolova in a contemplative dialogue between place, memory, and photographic transformation. Rooted in early photographic processes, Liebmann’s cyanotypes and Nikolova’s wet plate collodion images transcend straightforward landscape depiction to become meditations on time, perception, and the elemental.’

Free to attend, open to all!

Support Me

Did you know that my Patreon page now operates as a searchable resource for my analogue photography experiments since 2020? On my Patreon page, you can find recipes and tutorials for most of the processes I use. I believe that it is important to keep this information free source, but if you’d like to support my practice I would welcome donations. All proceeds go towards the further development of my practice. Patreon (£10 Subscription includes: Monthly postcard and regular tutorials and videos. There are lower tiers available.)

This month I am offering Kielder Starfield as an A6 postcard on recycled cardboard, for £10+ Patreon subscribers. All Patreon funds go towards the development of my practice.

Dr Melanie King

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