Henri Blommers
The Netherlands
Biography
Henri Blommers (Amsterdam) is an experimental image maker who combines analog images with other techniques such as collage and stitching. Before, after, or while developing his films, he adds botanical or chemical ingredients depending on the theme of his current subject. His subsequently digitized, sometimes camera-less images are materialized by possible interventions during each step in the process, only to be distorted again as a form of recycling. Henri creates a surreal refuge filled with bright colors based on contemporary social themes. His projects revolve around the environment and the human condition on topics like biodiversity, the rising sea level, and increasing digitization.
His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and his work made it to the finals of the Lensculture Art awards in 2023 and won the Denis Roussel award for innovations in analog photography in 2022.
Following a career in IT, he switched completely to photography after graduating with a large collage on his mother’s eyesight from the Amsterdam Fotoacademie in 2010. Henri is co-creator of Hello Gorgeous magazine, fighting the stigma around HIV, and a member of art collective BISH. Being in-between homes for over three years, he started @gardenofhenri during covid-19 when he was stuck on his allotment.
Project
“Salting the Earth” by Henri Blommers is an experimental, environmentally engaged photography project that responds to the salinisation of soil and the often-overlooked consequences of everyday human actions on the earth’s ecosystems. Through a blend of analogue photographic processes and material intervention, Blommers physically incorporates salt, plants and other organic matter into his images — soaking negatives in salt, spraying salt on specimens and working directly with botanical elements — to make visible the slow degradation and hidden impacts of salinisation on plant life and soil health.
The work fuses poetic visual language with environmental urgency, urging viewers to consider how seemingly innocuous practices contribute to ecological imbalance over time. Through this tactile, process-driven approach, ""Salting the Earth"" becomes a meditation on fragility, consequence and our relationship to the living world beneath our feet.
