These prints are made with my mother. She comes to stay with me, and we spend time observing the life of the Indigenous garden that I have been slowly regenerating for over 20 years. This regeneration work is done with the knowledge that I gained from her, and it takes the time and the labour of caring. At this time in her life, when she no longer has the capacity to remember the immediate past or plan the future, her observation of the moment is even more acute.

Ten minutes of a sunny day exposes the cyanotype print. A print is made with the vegetation not of it. (A mushroom spore print is made overnight when she stays, the pressing of leaves, flowers and seaweed takes longer). It is, at the same time, making her life visible and plants visible.

Contemplating recent writing by Lesley Head, we ask how we can work in a more direct relationship with plants and the labour of caring:

‘… the invisibility of plants in human history is closely tied to the invisibility of women… often accompanied by children’ p 121

…That is, as written by Western historians.’ p 5.

Zena Cumpston, Michael-Shawn Fletcher and Lesley Head. Plants: Past, Present and Future. Australia, Thames and Hudson, 2022

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