Launched in 2024 to support up-and-coming talent, our residency programme offers access to our studios and 318 Art Lab darkrooms, mentorship from industry professionals, and a three-month co-working membership. This week, we're featuring Ben Waters as he talks us through his creative process and how the residency has shaped his work.

SM: How has the residency shaped or shifted your current project?

BW: This residency happened at a point of transition with my practice and has been really great in helping me to develop my current project. Part of what drew me to apply was a desire to move my work away from only existing as files on a screen. I had applied with the intention of printing prior images from my on going work ‘With Eyes Closed’ but as I began to plan my printing days I instead opted to use this as an opportunity to try something entirely new; luminograms.

Having the time and resources to just experiment felt really refreshing and necessary for where I was at with this work. This opportunity has allowed me to create in ways  I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to and has moved my project forward into new areas I couldn’t have predicted.

SM: How did access to the studio’s resources and network influence your process?

BW: The whole team and community based around Monde and 318 are lovely and having not done much Cameraless printing before, it was a great set of people to be amongst whilst learning. Luminograms are so much a process of trial and error so it was really useful to have access to both the resources, be that various other equipment for producing and shaping light (lasers, ND Filters, etc) but also the people around me had the knowledge to suggest and explain other interesting ways I could experiment.

SM: What’s the core idea or question behind the project you’ve been working on here?

BW: Working with luminograms, it initially started from a place of pure experimentation and just seeing how light reacted on the paper.  My larger body of work has been exploring ideas around memory, meaning and space and I found I began to be drawn into the idea of trying to create a sense of space and depth within the surface of the prints.

In many ways it felt like a role reversal on the usual method of image making, where light is caught onto a surface to render a space that is ‘there’. I found it interesting to work with almost an identical process but instead use light to render a space that ‘isn’t’.

Producing this work has definitely shaped how I think about photography itself in a bit of a meta way by considering the illusory element that so innately ingrained into the medium.

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