Tyler School of Art and Architecture Art students recently visited the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University, taking a decidedly different path toward creatively chronicling what they experienced.

Rather than taking photos of traditional landscapes, flowers or plants, they were tasked with capturing the essence of the Arboretum, in most cases with no camera at all.

After speaking with Ambler Arboretum Director Kathy Salisbury and Tyler School of Art and Architecture Greenhouse Education and Research Complex Manager Ben Snyder, “I realized there was so much rich history within the arboretum and the campus,” said Adjunct Associate Professor of Photography Laurie Beck Peterson.

“This is workshop-based course designed to expand the students’ knowledge of photography processes. When we decided that our subject for this project would be the Arboretum, I encouraged the students to create a mid-semester project in the fall where they reflected upon what they had experienced, heard and seen on campus,” she said. “They then cultivated plants suitable for plant-based photographic processes from the campus and locations in the gardens to inspire them. The goal was to see how they could connect all of the dots, from the eco-friendly, sustainable plant-based photo printing they are learning to something they were interested in researching further.”  

The creative outcomes of three of the students’ work is currently on display in Bright Hall at Temple Ambler, with new images to be added highlighting the talents of other students in the class being represented in the coming weeks.

Senior photography major Jami DeLuca said she was drawn to photography as a career “because I needed to do something creative.” Visiting the Ambler Arboretum, she said, provided a tangible way to put what they had been learning in the classroom into practice.

“We had been learning about alternative eco-friendly, sustainable ways of printing. We had this great opportunity to tour the Arboretum and learn more about the history of the Ambler Campus and how it connected to sustainability,” she said. “With this course, we’ve been focusing on our connection to nature, which made me think about how we internalize that connection and how important it is to our mental and physical health."

During their tour, Salisbury “told us a story about how patients would recover faster in the hospital if they could just see a tree from their window and that really struck a chord with me,” said DeLuca.

“I’ve always known that I feel better once I’m in nature but learning that there is science behind that was inspiring. For my project, I wanted to manifest the body with plants,” she said. “I used cyanophytograms (a cameraless, experimental photographic process that combines cyanotype printing with natural plant-based pigments or materials) which allows for a lot of experimentation compared to some other eco-processes. I think experimentation is so important to the learning process and I feel like I’m going to internalize and retain all of these skills because of this opportunity to experiment and connect my work to nature, to something larger than just taking a photo.” 

Interdisciplinary projects that utilize the unique resources of the gardens and natural spaces of Temple Ambler are essential to the Arboretum’s mission, said Salisbury.

“So many people think the gardens are just beautiful, or just for horticulture or landscape architecture majors, but these spaces are the University’s public botanical garden, outdoor classroom and living laboratory. They are for all faculty, staff and students in addition to the general public,” she said. “Projects like this not only raise awareness about the availability and potential of the gardens but also, often, teach us how else the gardens can be imagined, useful and educational.”

Salisbury said she didn’t think many of a dedicated horticulturists working in the gardens “would have thought about this clay soil being useful to make beautiful pots or the chemicals inside the plants being used to develop photos.”

“It is amazing! Projects like this broaden our audience within the University and beyond, demonstrating we are more than just a pretty space,” she said. “I hope the students learned that their University has an amazing resource, a benefit in the Arboretum that is free and open to the public seven days a week from sunrise to sunset. I hope they have been inspired to think differently about the world around them and our connection to it — I hope it expands or inspires new creative directions and ideas, innovation and experimentation while also providing them a little bit more knowledge about the significant history of the Ambler Campus and Temple University.”

Classic Methods, Modern Creations

During the process of creating their pieces, students fostered “a connection between environmental awareness, scientific observation and creative photographic expression,” using in many cases “anthotypes” and “phytograpms,” photographic processes that were being experimented with as far back as the early 1800s,” said Peterson.    

“We wanted to use their experiences within the Arboretum to contextualize these eco-friendly practices, which are all new to the students. An anthotype is made by crushing up plant materials — it could be leaves, it could be berries, it could be flowers — and making an emulsion that can then be used to coat printmaking paper,” she said. “You place something on top of the coated paper — another piece of plant material, a positive transparency, other objects, and then everything is exposed to the sun. The areas covered by an object, leaf or flower retain the color of the emulsion.”

Phytograms, Peterson said, are made using plant-based developer.

“This work connects directly to the early history of photography. When photography was first discovered, scientists and botanists were experimenting with ways to activate and control light-sensitive chemical reactions,” she said. “Kodak eventually recognized that plants rich in polyphenols (compounds produced as part of a plant’s defense response to pathogens) could serve as the basis for photographic development. The oxidation of these phenols forms the foundation of traditional Kodak developer.”

To make their own developer, “we harvest plants high in phenolic compounds, such as mint, basil, or certain fungi,” Peterson said.

“We combine them with citric acid, sodium carbonate (washing soda), then introduce additional plant material that we want to use as a mark-maker. That material is immersed in the developer, where it begins releasing its own phenols while simultaneously absorbing the solution,” she said. “The selected plant material is then placed directly onto a sheet of film. A heavy piece of glass is laid on top to ensure contact, and the image develops through exposure to sunlight — it develops itself in the sun.”

Peterson said she encouraged her students to use expired Ortho Litho film, “something that would commonly go into a landfill, to continue to tie into sustainability.”

“During this project, the students were also reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer and tending to their own hydroponic gardens,” she said. “In combination, I think that really helped them to understand the reciprocal relationships between people and plants. One of the things I really appreciate about Ben Snyder and Kathy is all of the information they were excited to share when talking with our students.”

According to Pilar Caruso, a junior Visual Studies major, she designed three anthotypes as “a creative exploration of the Louise Bush-Brown Formal Perennial Garden,” highlighting Bush-Brown’s scientific work, the Bright Memorial Fountain and the bush clover found within the garden.

“For my design, I considered Louise Bush Brown’s profound impact on Temple Ambler and the Pennsylvania Horticulture School for Women, as well as her commitment to making space for women in the horticulture field. She made known the beauty of plants and garden spaces to her local communities and the nation at large,” she said. “To honor this strong feminine presence, I printed a positive of America’s Garden Book, which she wrote with her husband, and became a foundational tool for gardeners. I wrote the names of the plants and their properties beside their exposures to emulate the type of scientific documentation found in her book.”

According to Caruso, the project was “my first class in the photography department — an untraditional introduction to photography.”

“It definitely taught me patience because you’re not getting an immediate result like when you take a picture and know that what you see through the lens is what you will get. I think we often think of photography as the most tangible, most truthful representation of reality that we can get, whereas using these other processes, there are other ways to interpret the result,” she said. “I remembered reading the gardens described as a tapestry of texture and color, so that inspired me to think of an alternative to the paper we’ve been working with. I did use a little bit of traditional photography as well, but it’s such a different way to translate it. You have to have faith in the process — my pieces were sitting out in the sun for more than a month, a month where I didn’t know what the end product was going to look like.”

Caruso printed her work on “repurposed doilies to evoke a feminine quality and made emulsions from beets and dye garden berries to connect my work to other gardens and types of plants.”

“Before printing, I pressed the flowers I collected as a way of preserving them, allowing me to add them back into the project once I finished printing — continuing the cycle of appreciation for plant material in an eco-conscious way,” she said. “My chosen plants had different meanings, each working harmoniously in the garden, changing with the seasons. I experimented by printing on tea bags, a material that would otherwise be disposed of after use, to bring sustainability into my work. Ultimately, through this project, I became deeply aware

of the history of the Louise Bush-Brown Garden, my place in it and how to appreciate every aspect of plant life.”

Finding Inspiration in More than a Century of Horticultural History

Through this project and their interactions with the campus and the people that protect and preserve its gardens, the students “really got to understand why things were planted where they were, what has taken place in the Arboretum since the storm in 2021 and all of the research-based work taking place in the Arboretum and the Temple Ambler Field Station,” Peterson said.

“While, the students really approached their projects in a very individualized way, they were tasked with distilling the information that had been shared with them and finding something that they really connected with — an idea or a location or a part of this rich history,” she said. “Collaboration really is an important part of creation. It’s also essential to be able to communicate your artistic vision, your ideas and themes, with the viewer.”

Fae Violet Lobron, a senior majoring in Art Therapy, said she found her inspiration in a sculpture of a woman helping a child pot a plant that sits at the center of the Viola Anders Herb Garden.

“The sculpture reminded me of the passing of skills and values from one generation to the next and emphasized the feminine divine feeling I experienced in these gardens,” she said. “I think part of what makes the Ambler Campus feel comfortable is the fact that it has been nurtured for so long, and there is a strong sense of care for the land. It almost makes me feel like I will be cared for in return.”

According to Lobron, for her project she utilized a “combination of anthotype emulsion coated paper and some exposed anthotypes to create an ephemeral painting/drawing of the sculpture.”

“The orange paper was coated with emulsion made from cosmos found in the Tyler dye garden. The image was painted with a black walnut ink made from walnuts found near the house I grew up in while the purple paper was coated with matter root berry emulsion also found in Tyler’s dye garden,” she said. “Before sun exposure, the colors are vibrant and rich. I used the black walnut ink again for the background and framed the image with anthotypes made with lyndon arrow wood berries found at Temple Ambler and matter root berry with a string used as the phytogram. The use of textile material and plant-based pigment represents the connection between femininity, the cultivation of plant life and the fiber arts and crafts as a primary mode of construction and expression by women for centuries.”

Lobron said that her anthotype work and the work of the other students “are ephemeral.”

“They are made from materials that don’t last forever —they have a life cycle, just like in nature. The history of these gardens, of the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women, what the students did in their lifetimes and how that can go on and on through generations, truly inspired me,” she said. “What we do in this class is very experimental, very trial and error. (Peterson) encourages us to try new things and see what happens, which allows for a pretty natural flow of ideas. Discovering the Arboretum, it’s nice to know that there is a different kind of space, a different resource, for students to enjoy.”

Opportunities for Enriching Interdisciplinary Experiences

The photography class’s experiential way of creation — “just sitting out in sun in the gardens and making your art, that’s the type of experience that crosses disciplines,” said Peterson.

“I’ve had criminal justice majors, students majoring in sports medicine. Every student comes into the class with a desire to learn and I think everybody comes out the other side with something of value they never expected,” she said. “My hope is that this is just the beginning of the conversation — how do we make these unique experiences more accessible to students at Temple Ambler and throughout the University. I hope that people who see these projects discover that photography and photo-based processes are much broader than they realize.”

One of the best parts of her job, Salisbury said “is interacting with curious and ambitious professors who think outside the box to include the Arboretum in their coursework.”

“I always learn so much and am endlessly impressed by the results and I hope the same will be true for people who are able to view this exhibit. I think people will be surprised by what they learn and surprised about what plants can do,” she said. “I hope that other faculty viewing this exhibit or reading about it will be inspired to come to the Arboretum and take a tour to see how they may incorporate this amazing space into their curriculum. Imagination is almost the only limit for how these spaces may be used; we aim to be a place of hands-on, interactive, experiential learning. If you can think of a way to have a hands-on outdoors component for your course, we can almost certainly make it happen here.”