Anne Kalinic
France
Biography
Anne Kalinic, born in Paris in 1975, is a French photographer currently based in Nantes. After studying a PhD in Language Sciences and Communication, she transitioned to photography, starting analog photography in 2015. Her work focuses on peri-urban landscapes, exploring human alteration of the environment, especially through rivers like the Yvette and the Danube. Influenced by exhibitions like New Topographics and French Landscape, she works with the anthotype technique, using plant juices to create photographs, aiming to replace toxic chemicals in the darkroom. Her recent work draws from anthropologist Philippe Descola’s ideas, challenging the dichotomy between nature and culture and questioning how humans perceive and relate to the natural world. Anne continues to seek sustainable photographic processes.
Last Project
Her latest work is inspired by the anthropologist Philippe Descola, author of Nature and Culture (2005). Culture – as a collective human making – is often seen as essentially different from nature, which is portrayed as a collective of the nonhuman world of plants, animals, geology, and natural forces. Descola shows this essential difference is not only a specifically Western notion, but also a very recent one. By thinking beyond nature and culture as a simple dichotomy, is a way one can see the world afresh.
Statement
Her research led her to know the anthotype technique, or making photographs out of plants' juices, is a process that originated around the same time as cyanotypes. The process was discovered by Sir John Herschel in 1840 and studied by Mary Sommerville at the same time. With this process, local plants can be part of making photographic images. Little by little, she would try chemical-free substances for the darkroom, replacing the toxic industrial materials in the photographic process.
