P Magazine, Polaroid International Photography, Issue 20
Cover Article: Fleming Lunsford
Written and Interviewed by Peter Lester

For Fleming Lunsford, the true beauty of nature is in the details; seeds, stones, petals, leaves. While others simply walk over the detritus of the forest floor, Fleming collects it, arranges it and photographs it with Polaroid film. The results are simply beautiful.

Fleming Lunsford is a young American photographer, living, studying and working in Virginia. Fleming is studying for her masters degree in photography at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and is due to graduate in May 2001. As well as being a regular instructor in photography at the university, Fleming also gives one-day workshops in Polaroid creative techniques and in pinhole photography.

This selection from Fleming's latest work is an excellent example of how effective the Polaroid emulsion lift process can be, when it is used sympathetically with the subject matter. Here, process and subject matter support each other so well, that the actual images look almost like the products of nature. Here she explains how this series eventually came to fruition.

You seem to have a great interest in, and affinity with, natural forms.
It was almost predestined. My mother had her own flower business and my father was an avid gardener. I grew up working alongside them, and so I learned a lot about plants and nature. Later, when I started taking photography seriously, I was quickly drawn back to the natural forms that had informed so much of my childhood.

What is interesting about "nature" as a general visual theme, is the almost infinite variety of viewpoints photographers have on the subject.
I think nature is a difficult subject. For example, almost everyone will have photographed a beautiful flower at some point, so it's hard to avoid the visual clichés. I didn't want to take that route, so I began a project, which I called "Spring Sprouting," that involved photographing abstract forms in nature. Although I found the subject matter more inspiring, and more of a visual challenge, what I produced didn't get close to what was in my mind - in fact they were rather flat and boring. There was kind of an inexplicable absence in those early images, so I gave up for a while.

The pictures we have here suggest you came back to it.
A few years later, I was introduced to the Polaroid emulsion lift process. For those who haven't tried it, it involves boiling a Polaroid print, then soaking it in cold water while slowly separating the emulsion from its backing, and carefully transferring the emulsion to watercolor paper. I really enjoyed the technique. Sometimes the results are truly serendipitous; an exciting mix of creativity and discovery.

I also thought that the transparent qualities of the emulsion had great potential for my abandoned nature project. I realized that the membranous effect and the rippled edges of each Polaroid emulsion lift echoed visual qualities I saw in plant forms. This was the missing element. I began photographing plant structures again, especially for emulsion lifts. Now I take walks, head bent to the ground, envelope in hand, to collect materials to explore with the emulsion lift technique. I have gathered, catalogued and photographed many natural forms: maple tree helicopters, mimosa tree blossom fluffs, seed pods, flower stamen, autumn leaves, winter frost, new dandelions, dead weeds, bird feathers, bug wings, silver dollar plants, jewel berries, even dirt.

In your images, these scraps of nature seem to have undergone some form of transformation.
Once you really look at these sometimes tiny objects, you can find real beauty in the detail. I help to reveal the interesting shapes, textures and structures by lighting them in the studio, often from behind, so that the veins and inner-workings glow. Then making them into Polaroid emulsion lift multiples provides a cohesion and structure to the series that I initially couldn't find.

My goal with this series is to capture the abstract, often unrecognizable beauty that surrounds us. One of my teachers once said that a photograph succeeds if the viewer thinks about the subject in a different way, long after they looked at the image. My hope is that, after seeing these Polaroid emulsion lifts, someone will look differently at weeds or maple helicopters the next time they are on a walk or working in the garden.