Photosynthesis from kamau ware on Vimeo.

The birth of the idea of Photosynthesis came to Kamau, when he and Lesley were locked out of their apartment. Kamau had planned to stay inside and scan his negatives, while Lesley wanted fresh air. They both decided to go out for a minute but noticed they were locked out of their apartment! They had to wait for the landlord to get home from church to let them in. Although Lesley was getting her fresh air, she became frustrated of waiting around and decided to go to KDog (coffee shop) to grab coffee. Kamau decided to try something new with his camera and noticed that he had red scale film inside. He decided to shoot around the neighborhood to test. What he found with his photographs, became a very interesting project and he decided to make an exhibit out of it. In the end, they both succeeded in getting what they wanted. Being locked out the apartment, was the beginning of the "red-scale" series.

The concept behind Photosynthesis is the fascination of how things are exchanged between living beings and objects. One of his purposes for the show, is to let people look at a photograph and to interpret it themselves, instead of viewing the work how he viewed it. He captured the way humans and objects exist and views it as art. He feels that the exchange we have with nature is lopsided. Nature gives us so much, but what do we give nature? We rape so much of the earth's resources and do not take good care of the planet we live in. When we look around us, we notice the water and air is polluted. We even have to be careful of where our animals and plants are raised because they are becoming no good for our consumption.

The film used for this particular project is, Red Scale film. Some of the key attributes about using the red scale film is the changing of the color of nature and objects. For instance, the blue willfully turned yellow, and red gave it that intensity. But the color green, seemed to be a stubborn color... None of the green objects were altered.

Photosynthesis was held at K-Dog from November 14th through December 14, 2009.

"Frogs"
One of my personal favorites!

To view more of his work, go to www.kamaustudio.com.