Harold Strak - Arthropoda

The Pencil of Nature by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) appeared in six installments between 1844 and 1846, a publication that is generally regarded as the first book to be illustrated with original photographic prints and intended for a broad readership. The title and the photographic process developed by Talbot have the requisite relevance to the work of Harold Strak, who was born 159 years later. This might seem far-fetched, but in Harold Strak’s work the present and the past are closely linked. There are few other contemporary photographers who are as acutely aware of the chemical, mechanical and artistic development of photography since its official introduction as Harold Strak (1959, Mozambique, now living in Amsterdam). Besides intensive study into 19th-century photography and printing techniques, he had to learn how to prepare glass negatives. Meanwhile, he managed to construct a wooden 33 × 44 cm plate camera with a bellows taken from a repro camera that he used to document Arthropoda, the phylum of invertebrates with jointed limbs. Not in the way they surround us in countless numbers, but in various states of decomposition after their relatively short lives. A chemical and optical miracle thus unveils the marvellous world of the countless arthropods.