136 photograms, 87 contact prints and 496 leaf negative prints

different sizes 

C-print, unique

Feeding on Light is a series of analogue colour photographs produced in the darkroom using leaves as both subject and material. Collected leaves, marked by insects, fungi, bacteria, and environmental conditions, carry traces of the complex relationships between plants and other organisms. Through photograms, contact prints, multiple exposures, and the use of leaves as photographic negatives, the works emerge from direct encounters between plant matter, coloured light, and photosensitive paper. By bringing the outdoors into the analogue colour darkroom, Kovacovsky transforms these traces into images that oscillate between observation and abstraction. Working in darkness allows chance to become an active collaborator; unexpected overlaps, colour shifts, and spatial relationships are integral to the process. Through an interplay of presence and absence, veins, fungal growth, and insect damage are revealed alongside the negative spaces of what has been eaten away. The darkroom becomes a site of transformation where biological and photographic processes intersect. The work reflects on photosynthesis as the foundation of life and on the complex ecological relationships embedded within every leaf.

Feeding on Light 2011 - 2014

136 photograms, 87 contact prints and 496 leaf negative prints of aspen Populus tremula, bird cherry Prunus padus, black alder Alnus glutinosa, common hornbeam Carpinus betulu, dogwoods Cornus sp., hazel Corylus avellana, hogweed Heracleum sphondylium, hybrid plane Platanus x acerifolia, Japanese cherry Prunus serrulata, lilac Syringa sp., linden Tilia sp., monarch birch Betula maximowicziana, northern red oak Quercus rubra, Prunus sp., Solomon’s seal Polygonatum multiflorum, sow thistle Sonchus oleraceus, white clover Trifolium repens and wych elm Ulmus glabra all C-prints