A small black-and-white silver gelatin photograph, Coral Study, captures a fragment of coral debris collected during fieldwork on Heron Island. This delicate relic, previously photocopied and returned to the beach, is depicted with precise clarity yet evokes broader conceptual questions of materiality and representation. Treated as a ‘negative’ in its photocopied form, the coral’s momentary interaction with the copier’s scanning light imbued it with a singularity that could not be replicated. The resulting photograph, with its deep black background and suspended form, highlights the ephemerality of coral as both species and material.



The decision to produce a silver gelatin photograph from this negative stems from the desire to emphasise the physicality and permanence of the coral’s fleeting imprint. Silver gelatin printing is a hands-on, process-driven method that contrasts the immediate, machine-driven xeroxing process. The resulting photograph becomes an artefact that preserves the impermanence of the coral debris while echoing the fragility of the ecosystems it represents - speaking to the interplay between the reproducibility of mechanical processes and the singularity of handmade photographic techniques.