Sarah Darke Sarah is a Photographic artist living in Somerset, England. She uses a ‘cameraless’ process to make ‘Lumen’ prints using plants and flowers from her garden to explore the beauty and fragility of life. Sarah came to photography from a career in Psychiatric Nursing, which was cut short due to ill health, and hence she chose to return to her love art in the form of Photography. She went on to gain a ‘Licentiateship’ in Applied Photography from the ‘The Royal Photographic Society’, specializing in Monochrome and Darkroom practice. Wanting to further develop her work Sarah embarked on and gained both, a Masters Degree in Photography under Plymouth University, and an ‘Associateship’ of the Royal Photographic Society. During this time Sarah became completely housebound, but the challenge of a small landscape proved the catalyst towards developing a more personal and experimental practice where she started embracing the quirks of ‘toy’ and pinhole cameras. Experimentation continues to be at heart of Sarah’s practice which led to developing her current ‘Lumen’ print series, which began in 2015 the process is both accessible and gives a more satisfying hands on approach. A ‘Lumen’ is essentially like a photogram which uses the sun to develop the image on monochrome, and colour photographic papers, combining new and vintage papers of up to 50 years old. The subject is placed directly onto the paper, covered with glass, then exposed to the sun. Over the last couple of years Sarah has been further experimenting by adding certain ingredients, like salt and lemon juice to enhance texture and depth, the prints are left out for up to 10 days in all weathers. Once the exposure has finished the unfixed image is then scanned and a digital archival image produced and the original stored. Sarah is constantly fascinated by the neverending variety of results from this process. Sarah has only recently started exhibiting her work and has featured in number of local group exhibitions and her first solo show. Her work has also featured on ‘Photomachina’ Instagram page February 2020 and in the ‘Connected 2020’ online Photography show.