Soil Matters
Aindreas Scholz
The technique of soil chromatography is traditionally used in agriculture to assess the quality of topsoils including carbon content and nutrients. Scholz has been experimenting with soil chromatography using collected soil samples and photographic components, such as coating filter paper in the dark with silver nitrate. Chromas with darker and more complex patterns and colours represent more ‘organic’ soils, which sandy and nutrient-poor soils lack. Once fully developed, the resulting chromas strongly resemble growth rings, a sort of photographic record that visually restores what was once perhaps lost such as ancient trees and soil minerals.
Aindreas Scholz (b. 1981) grew up in a bilingual home, dividing his time between Ireland and Germany. He studied photography at the Technological University Dublin, followed by a postgraduate study at Goldsmiths College, London, where he deepened his understanding of critical and contemporary art-making theories and practices. Scholz subsequently trained as a teacher at the Institute of Education, University College London, developing specialist subject-specific skills for teaching art and photography to young people. Scholz’s artmaking focuses on environments affected by human activity, encompassing landscapes transformed by war, pollution, and the climate crisis. He experiments with alternative and sustainable photographic processes, to highlight the need to critically reflect on our daily carbon footprint. Scholz’s work has been exhibited in a range of institutions in Dublin, London, Brussels, Cologne, and Vienna.
Website: aindreasscholz.com
Instagram: aindreasscholz
We Are Making a New World
The cyanotypes of We Are Making a New World refer to the story of King Canute and the waves. In the story, Canute demonstrates to his court that he has no control over the incoming tide, explaining that his secular powers are in vain compared to the forces of higher powers. Similarly, it remains uncertain if our current efforts in securing our shores from ever higher reaching seawaters will be effective or if we must face — like King Canute — the inevitable: nature’s powerful revenge.
The emerging climate crisis is strongly echoed in Scholz's work as the methodology relies on the use of seawater and soil to evoke place-specific coastal and environmental vulnerability and highlights the urgent need to develop alternatives to reduce our global carbon footprint. Referencing the writings of Heinrich Böll and his polysemic concept of Erde (earth, Earth, or soil), We Are Making A New World incorporates ‘soil’ as part of a sustainable photographic printing practice, simultaneously evoking the gradual threat that coastal erosions pose.
Seasick
Exploring the social, psychological, and ecological impact of plastic waste led Scholz to conceive his ongoing project Seasick. During beach clean-ups he collects marine plastic debris, recording and documenting his findings using cyanotype – a sustainable 19th century photographic printing process that produces dark-blue prints. The process allows Scholz to use a low-tech method of mass reproduction with a low environmental impact.
Using only sunlight and seawater to develop the prints allowed Scholz to produce a series of blueprints in which a range of white and ghostly absences seemingly float in a cobalt-blue sea. Through these ‘blueprints’, Scholz aims to hold the viewer’s attention and to help raise questions by inviting us to reflect on our global footprint and to think about the ‘blueprints’ that we, as a species, will leave behind.