Herbarium Impressions — Paolo Bianco

Paolo Bianco
About me

Exhibit Design
Interfaces in Val Bormida vol. 1
Interfaces in Alta Langa vol. 2
Una barca a remi
Interfaces in Alta Langa

Workshops
Herbarium Impressions
Holy Moly!
Contrasto
770 THz
Marela Biblioteca Civica
Station to Station

Design and Architecture
Casa MaMe
Cielo Domestico
Bruno
Spazi di mediazione
Quadrato Cerchio Triangolo
Casa Tozza

Editorial design
Space. DASP Yearbook

Communication design
ACC Lecture 2024

Research
Oddone 2050
Appennino l’Altro

Publications
Dislivelli

Teaching
Making Rooms
Interfaces

Contacts
↘ Email
↗ Instagram

Herbarium Impressions

September 2025

Tutors: Paolo Bianco
Coordinators: Damiano Angelini, Fabrizio Gallo, Maria Gentile
An initiative by: Associazione Vagamondo
With the support of: Comune di Bergolo

The workshop represented an encounter between art, science, botany, and territorial research. Through two pre-photographic techniques, anthotype and cyanotype, the participants explored and narrated how even a small stretch of land, the only 300 meters connecting the headquarters of Associazione Vagamondo to Bergolo's Community and Educational Garden, can enclose immense ecological variety and reveal itself as an unexpected resource.
The plants collected along the path, from wild species to those cultivated for food, assumed a dual role: both subject of the images and raw material for the colors used to produce them. Alongside the classic cyanotypes, recognizable by their blue-and-white images created through the reaction of iron salts with ultraviolet light, participants experimented with anthotype, a technique that exploits plant pigments capable of reacting to sunlight or to natural substances such as vinegar, baking soda, or Marseille soap. After the first attempts, the work turned into an open field of experimentation: mixed techniques, overlays, and unforeseen results gave life to a surprising visual narrative, limited only by the number of sheets available and the weather.
Like the famous botanical photograms of Anna Atkins, photography pioneer who used cyanotype to catalogue algae and plants, or Alan Butler’s Virtual Botany Cyanotypes, which explore plant life within video games and digital environments, or again like Caravaggio’s renowned Canestra di frutta, where “biological realism” allowed scholars to identify ancient varieties now vanished, this work too invites us to discover (and demonstrate) the many roles that nature can embody: as natural element, as ingredient, artistic subject and, finally, as object of scientific inquiry.

proudly made with cargo.site

font in use: DINAMO Diatype