Diana Lelonek’s exhibition is associated with the artist’s return to her roots, namely to photography, which she studied at UAP in Poznań. The artist also looks back to the very beginnings of this field of art, by employing early photographic techniques – solarigraphy, cyanotype and anthotype. The title of the exhibition directs our attention towards the sun, which was once the essential factor in the process of producing photographs. As André Rouillé writes, the material character of photography, resulting from the exchange of energy between the object and the image, has given way to the mathematical and logical universe of digital images. The show’s title, Solarstalgia also draws on the term ‘solastalgia’, used to describe the melancholy and distress caused by environmental catastrophe.

In early 2024, Lelonek was invited to give a solo presentation at the Glacier Garden Museum in Lucerne as part of the exhibition series Watching the Glacier Disappear. The artist’s project was inspired by the practice of covering the Rhône glacier with tarpaulins intended to protect it from melting. Unfortunately, the effect was the opposite. And to make matters worse, the tarpaulins, made of artificial plastic, further burden the environment by polluting the glacier and the water at the source of the Rhône with microplastics.

Lelonek set out to develop photographs on large sheets of fabric using the light-sensitive cyanotype technique, which relies on exposing a layer of cloth or paper coated with this substance to the sun. To create the solarigraphs, which were later developed in cyanotype, Lelonek first had to travel to the mountains. The artist set off for the Alps carrying a large box containing a camera obscura with light-sensitive paper inside. For two months, the sun streaming in through a hole in the camera drew its path against the background of the monumental mountain peaks. The result of this process was a negative in which the sun burned its mark.

The experience of working with the sun and early photographic techniques awakened the artist’s curiosity for experimenting with the material aspects of photography and minimising the use of inorganic materials. This is how she arrived at anthotype – an 18th-century technique relying on the photosensitives properties of the plants. The anthotypes shown in the exhibition depict Văcărești Nature Park in Bucharest, created on what was once one of the largest urban wastelands in Europe, where plant-life and wildlife flourished following the abandoned Ceaușescu-era reservoir and dam project.

The turn in Diana Lelonek’s work is directed toward fundamental life-giving processes. It is connected with the search for the least invasive techniques, liberation from dominant technology, and following the path of photography’s materiality.