David Chalmers

In 2010, I was awarded a commission from Chrysalis Arts as part of their ‘Celebrating Place’project. This was the start of a new body of work based on the forests of the North York Moors National Park, producing a series of carbon transfer photographs using 8 x 10 inch sheet film with my Deardorff field camera.

These photographs of trees are made from carbon dust from the trees themselves. The images explore an organic cycle using a traditional process, hence ‘Carbon to Carbon’. 8 x10 inch negatives were made to produce these prints. The blacks within each print were produced with a formula of Indian ink and ground charcoal.

My ‘photo-charcoal prints’, as I like to call them, aim to encapsulate the beauty and vulnerability of our forests as I see them. The unpredictability of carbon dust embedded in each print has created a unique tonal scale that I can never repeat. This, perhaps, makes each print as individual and fragile as the woodland that I have chosen to photograph.

DAVID CHALMERS b. 1964

EDUCATION

1984 Higher National Diploma, Design Photography, Blackpool and The Fylde College

EXHIBITIONS

2012 Carbon to Carbon, Woodend Art Gallery, Scarborough

2011 The Butterfly Rooms Gallery, Saltaire, Bradford

2011 Moors and Coast, Pannett Art Gallery, Whitby

2010 Mini Art Show II, South Street Gallery, North Yorkshire

2010 Pindar East Coast Open, Scarborough Art Gallery, North Yorkshire

2009 Featured artist, South Street Gallery, North Yorkshire

2008 Branching Out, South Street Gallery, North Yorkshire

2007 First Things First, South Street Gallery, North Yorkshire

2007 High Tide, Helmsley Art Centre, North Yorkshire

2006 Unfamiliar Place, Scarborough Art Gallery, North Yorkshire

2005 Open Exhibition, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull

2004 Open Exhibition, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull

1997 Scottish Landscapes, Silver Light Gallery, Carmel, California

1995 Light Years, Woodlands Art Gallery, London

COMMISSIONS

2000 Forest for Scotland, a stamp for the Royal Mail Millennium Collection

1993 Commissioned by The Tower of London to creatively photograph the complete Crown Jewels Collection

AWARDS

2010 Celebrating Place, Chrysalis Arts

2006 Arts Council funding for Unfamiliar Place

2001 Design and Art Direction Award, Forest for Scotland won a silver award for best design photography