Allan Macintyre

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Oceanology-

In 2011 I began experimenting with large-format cameras in specially constructed waterproof housings and have been using them to document coral reef environments. Governed in part by chance, this process-driven work is accomplished by taking one image per dive, and in most cases superimposing multiple exposures on a sheet of film during each trip to the bottom. In an attempt to reflect the complexity of the marine environment, I have experimented with sandwiching together positive and negative images from different dives. Here I have drawn inspiration from the montages of the early 20th-century German photographer Heinz Hajek-Halke, who created kinetic compositions by marrying positive and negative forms.

In 2022 I started to a use digital camera underwater to make images in grids. I have printed out some of these photographs, drawn on them, and rephotographed them with an 8x10 camera in garden settings as a way to accentuate the strange beauty of the undersea world.

My father was a marine sedimentologist who studied coral reefs, and this series began during trips to help him in the field as he approached retirement. The reef ecosystem has collapsed in the span of his career and the scope of this disaster is particularly acute to those who have worked in this discipline for so long.

With much of my work, I like pairing photographs with paintings, prints, and drawings, and in this project, many of these depict sharks. They have become a personal totem representing the stresses that ocean based ecosystems face. Seeing a shark underwater, I have felt less of a threat and more in awe of their sheer beauty. These animals have been swimming in Earth's oceans for hundreds of millions of years, and it is tragic to see how many are endangered today.
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Liquid Magnet-

I first came across ferrofluid in 2007 when I saw this MIT video that was posted online. Ferrofluid is a highly magnetized liquid composed of nanoscale ferromagnetic particles suspended in a carrier fluid. It has the ability to change shape when in the presence of a strong magnetic field. After seeing this video I started making drawings with ferrofluid on large sheets of film and I was mesmerized by its ability to mutate into different configurations that seem both cellular and celestial.

While creating these ferrofluid photograms, I had also begun working in Japan, doing street photography. Most of the photographs were made with a 35mm and an 8×10 camera. The 8×10 camera has a circular mask on the inside, allowing for two separate exposures. This setup creates a photo collage of different images on the same sheet of film, and involves some improvisation. While all the center pictures were taken in Japan, many of the background images are printed out from my iPhone and rephotographed with the view camera.

Matching the solar-like ferrofluid photograms with the pictures taken in Japan came out of reading stories about Amaterasu, the Shinto sun goddess. I am particularly fond of the tale of the Heavenly Rock Cave, and how Amaterasu was enticed to come out from this dark retreat and bring light back into the world.

Researching the Shinto religion has made me curious about Kami spirits which represent the positive and negative characteristics of the natural world. The ideas behind them have influenced my drawings, as have Samurai armor and the contemporary Japanese poster designs by Kiyoshi Awazu.
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Hubbub-

When I graduated from college I purchased an old 8x10 Deardorff camera that was made in the 1950’s. It was in rough shape and looked like it had been dragged across the pavement a few times. I wanted an 8x10 camera because no other device really captures the world in the same way, and most of my photographic heroes used them. I have had this camera since I was 23, and it still is my work horse.

This series is a collection experiments done mostly around my home. Along with the photographic images taken with the view camera, I have included a selection of drawings done over the same time period.
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Vulkan-

This is a long running project and grew out of multiple visits to different volcanic environments. The dynamic nature of these landscapes can easily be witnessed through return trips and it is one of the few places where instead of the human species altering the planet, the planet is altering itself.

One of my main interests with these locations has been searching out and cataloging found sculptures. I am particularly intrigued by mimetoliths, a form of pareidolia, which is the psychological phenomenon where the mind perceives faces and anthropomorphic shapes in rocks and other inanimate objects. These geological formations represent to me the creative nature of a volcano, and discovering them can be akin to an esoteric experience.

So far, this series has covered trips to Hawaii, Iceland, and Montserrat. Included with this work is a selection of microscopic images taken at Royal Holloway, University of London, and at Princeton's IAC lab where I photographed crystals growing in a sample of lava that I brought back from Hawaii. A small universe discovered inside the rock.
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R.O.-

This work represents random observations made with the 35mm camera in a variety of places over the years. I still get great satisfaction out of using film. It is unpredictable, you can run it through the camera twice, you get 36 chances, and who knows what you will get in the end, there are always revelations. It also sees the world like I do. Digital cameras have a cold and hyper sharp perfection to their vision, where as a 35mm camera can produce a sketchy fog that resembles dreams.
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Sugar Pepper-

My grandparents moved from Scotland to the Caribbean island of Barbados in 1939 and many of my relatives still reside there. One of my cousins runs a small family farm in the interior of the island and I have had the opportunity to document it over the years. The farm has become a laboratory for my photographic output. I have found myself drawn to the plant life on the property, and the contrast between the cultivated plants and the wild ones that grow in the gullies around the fields.

The island still has an active sugar industry which faces problems in the global market. The last working sugar factory Andrews Sugar Factory, recently closed. It was an antiquated place full of pipes and gears for crushing the cane. The cane left over from the grinding process is called "bagasse" and is burnt in large furnaces which run the steam powered engines in the factory. Some of the equipment inside dates to the 19th century.

Making spontaneous sculptures out of found objects seems to be the one thing that I keep on doing every time I visit Barbados. It is an urge I find very hard to suppress.
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Paleo-

Paleo is a body of work that focuses on the idea of time through the documentation of archaeological excavations and museum spaces that contain dinosaur fossils and meteorites.

Each subject marks a different period in a vast timeline that is hard to comprehend. Scientist believe that modern Homo sapiens appeared around 190,000 B.C.E., hence most archaeology deals with recent events along an infinite line. But what about going back 200 million years ago to the Jurassic, or 4.5 billion years ago, when some meteorites were created in the cold vacuum of space? Dinosaur fossils and meteorites are charged objects and are reminders of what geologists call "deep time". They also point to cataclysmic events that shaped our existence.
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Taupo-

In 1995 I received a Fulbright Grant to photograph with the 8x10 camera the Taupō Volcanic Zone, an area in New Zealand's North Island that runs from Whakaari Island down to the flooded caldera of the massive volcano this region is named after.

I witnessed first hand the volatile nature of the Taupō Volcanic Zone when Mt. Ruapehu erupted, resulting in the evaporation of the large lake in its summit crater. The variety of volcanoes across this landscape hint at the great pressure being exerted by the collision of the Australian and Pacific plates. Many weeks were spent traveling around in an old Mitsubishi station wagon, through sulphur soaked towns where the boiling mud percolates under your feet. And at the end of each week the same thought kept coming up, how do you live on a ticking time bomb?