Artist: Simone Darcy
Year Developed: 2025
Solaristype: A name derived from solaris, evoking the sun, and type, suggesting classification or a mode of manifestation
Materials: Silver gelatin film or paper, sunlight, plant matter, photo chemicals, organic solutions
Techniques: Solarisation, phytogram, light drawing, direct emulsion manipulation, re-exposure
Process Type: Conceptual sun-based methodology
SOLARISTYPE
Solaristype is a conceptual photographic process that integrates multiple sun-based techniques, including solarisation, phytogram, and light drawing performed directly on silver gelatin film. Rather than a fixed formula, Solaristype operates as an expanded methodology, treating the sun as both material and collaborator.
Through repeated or layered exposures, the film undergoes successive solar manipulations that transform the film’s emulsion. Plant matter and organic residues imprint themselves onto the surface, while gestural light movements trace ephemeral energies across the negative. Each exposure becomes a conversation between natural forces and human intervention, between order and entropy, control and surrender.
The resulting images exist between experiment and ritual, carrying the memory of the sun’s touch and the passage of time. Solaristype proposes a new form of ecological image-making created by a solar alchemy where light, matter, and the body are inseparable.
Thought-body nexus
Explores transformation, embodiment, and ecological agency through direct collaboration with the sun. Bridges experimental darkroom practice, performative gesture, and plant-based chemistry.
Solaristype also pays homage to Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) - a sentient, reflective planet where memory and matter merge. In this process, the silver gelatin surface becomes an elemental skin, collaborating with the sun to manifest traces of gesture, plant, and time. The photographic emulsion behaves like a living organism, absorbing, reacting, and transforming through contact with sunlight, chemistry, and plant matter, revealing a porous interface between material, memory, and the elements.