Samantha Jade is an artist working within expanded analogue practice, grounded in camera-less making and darkroom experimentation. She positions analogue photography as an evolving system shaped by alchemy, light, and time—processes through which photographic states emerge, transform, and dissolve.
For Jade, photography is transmutation: silver forged in stars, mined from the earth, bound in gelatine, activated by light, and revealed through chemistry. She engages these materials through an iterative practice, cultivating outcome through adaptation. Her images evolve at the intersection of chance, material agency, and intention.
Camera-less: Composing directly with light, chemistry, and material in the darkroom; a photograph formed through process, not depiction.
Systems: An ecology of interactions among light, chemistry, and time; the work emerges from networks of processes rather than single capture events.
Alchemy: Material transformation via deliberate deviations from standard protocols; beauty pursued through controlled uncertainty.
Light: Treated as instrument and matter: filtered, masked, refracted, and composed directly onto film/paper.
Time: Acts as an agent in the making, with entropy participating in how photographic matter changes and settles.
Photographic States: Conditions of light-sensitive media made visible through alchemical handling, foregrounded as the work itself.