Nature's Vanishing Faces

Johanna Rotko takes Conchita Fernandes through the process of her haunting, living portraits that are created with the help of live yeast cells.

- Conchita Fernandes

Nothing in this world is permanent. Photography is perhaps the only medium that has made it possible to immediately solidify the ephemerality of the world around us. However, in our quest to immortalise these transitory moments, we seldom forget that we are very much a part of these fleeting instances of time. It is this truth that informs Johanna Rotko’s photographs that are made in tandem with nature. Using living yeast cells to create what can best be described as “living portraits”, Rotko not only provides a new dimensionality to the way we create pictures but also reflects on our place in nature’s ever changing landscape.

“My artistic research explores my relationship with microbes and how the environment is affected by my actions, while also studying the perishability and disappearance of matter. Having said this, my thought process has changed over the course of time and research. I now find it very problematic to suggest that my work is the result of exploring my relationship with nature—relationship being the key word here. It suggests that we are separate from one another, when in fact we are one entity—a part of nature. It is this thought of being the other that has resulted in what has become a long, raging conflict with the environment,” she says.

The Birth of her Living Images