Chris Manfield

I Love You More Than My Own Skin
– Human melanin pigment on paper
© 2018 Chris Manfield

I wanted to bring life into my work by elaborating a biological substance into my photograph. In 2017 I found a research paper that explains the process of the extraction of human melanin pigment. In 2018 I've successfully extracted human melanin pigment and embedded it on paper to produce this photograph.

Melanin is the pigment responsible for skin coloration in human. It is biologically shared and inherited by every single one of us. The color of our skin on the other hand, has been historically tied to the issues of racism, slavery, and colonization — we've become divided among ourselves by the same exact thing that connects us to one another.

I believe that by understanding the cultural and metaphorical burden of this material, we can bring ourselves closer to the questions and values that we share with each other. I want to invite people to a space where they can contemplate the complexity of human conflicts and relationships while keeping in mind that there is beauty in every single one of us.

Dedicated to Frida Kahlo, San Francisco Art Institute, and those who have suffered and are suffering from racial inequity.
Take Care. Chris Manfield

I Love You More Than My Own Skin
– Human melanin pigment on paper
© 2018 Chris Manfield

Portrait of Sequoia
– Burnt hair and charred Sequoia bark on paper
© 2021 Chris Manfield

Printed using the burnt remains of the parents’ hair and collected charred bark of a Sequoia tree — “Portrait of Sequoia” is a physical representation of my prayer for a collective release, transformation, and growth through the way we struggle in mending our relationship with the world from one generation to the next at the forefront of Climate Crisis.

Held in the raised fist of our two-year-old child who was named after the Pyrophyte (Fire dependent plant) is the cone of a Sequoia Tree. Sequoia, was born with an Indonesian Father and American Mother on September 16th of 2018 after they moved to the East-Coast during the US immigration crisis following the most destructive wildfire in the history of California. Ironically the Sequoia trees, which distribution is restricted to a limited area of the western Sierra Nevada in California, is endangered due to habitat loss and suppression of wildfires. As some of the oldest, largest, living organisms on Earth, each individual Sequoia tree provides self-contained ecosystems for scores of species from multiple kingdoms. These kind souls, like ancient cathedrals, have provided not only homes but harmony to countless inter-species families for over millennia long. In my comparatively minuscule human struggle to find a home as an immigrant, I found myself one among these trees; and so Sequoia was named. They were born out of fire.

As we plunge ourselves deeper into the climate crisis, there is a serious need to decentralize our anthropocentric thinking and environmental culture. When we understand the notion that “human beings are separate and dominant to the natural world” as a residue of colonial thinking, we can begin to negotiate the implication of agencies and rights for the greater living ecosystems within the context of decolonization. We have to accept our universal relationship with the greater ecosystem as part of our identity before we can begin to address the meaning of environmental justice and sustainability. We have to see ourselves in the world and the world in ourselves.

Ghost of the Forest
– Human blood on paper
© 2016 Chris Manfield

Ghost of the Forest is a photographic print of the leaf of an albino redwood tree. Printed using human blood on paper, this photograph mirrors the sacred relationship between human beings and nature against the relationship between the albino trees and the endangered coastal redwood ecosystem. The albino redwood was regarded as parasitic plants until 2016, when one researcher speculates that they are supported by other trees for their role in storing toxic heavy metals.

Blue Climate
– Cyanotype on Tree Ring and on Paper
© 2016 Chris Manfield

As the color of the print “Blue Climate” deepens overtime due to the nature of the cyanotype chemistry that had been printed over the surface of a tree ring, the print undergoes a slow fading process which alludes to the disappearance of faunas at the forefront of the Holocene. Climate change will make the blues of the ocean bluer, serving as an early warning sign that global warming is significantly altering the planet’s ecosystems.

Manifest Rust
– Hybrid Rust and Giclee Print
© 2018 Chris Manfield

Between sand and snow, across the vast high-desert-scape of the North American continent lies the second longest highway in the United States. This east-west transcontinental freeway followed the same course westward passing through towns that were originally established to service the Oregon Trail, one of the two principal routes that moved people and commerce across the continent in the 19th century. A widely held cultural belief that American settlers were destined to expand across the North American Continent was fueled by the belief of the supremacy of European institutions, agricultural systems, and the desire to redeem Eurocentric Old World through the potentialities of building a new one. Manifest Destiny has been remarked by modern historians as an ideology that was used as a propaganda to justify the genocide of Indigenous people that followed the expansion of European colonies across the continent. Today the Interstate 80 can be seen from outer space as a notable incision that cuts through the world’s largest granite slab — the Sierra Nevada. Along the outstretch of this black asphalt snake lies these synthetic structures. Now abandoned like empty tombs, manifesting rust.

In 2020 while negotiating the idea of the connection between pseudoscience and the history of race, I came up with an alternative way of printing melanin pigment on paper which differs from the original method used in a separate project titled “I Love You More Than My Own Skin”. The original method of extracting melanin pigment from human hair and embedding it on paper using gum printing method had proven to be extremely labor and time intensive. Ultimately, it was the environmental toll from the process that led me to search for an alternative method of synthesizing melanin pigment. By completely re-inventing the printing process, I was able to come up with an entirely new photographic printing process which utilizes the photo-sensitive quality of the amino-acid L-Tyrosine which polymerizes into melanin analogue via oxidation through the catalyst of light.

Idea leuconoe, also known as rice paper butterfly is a native species from my birthplace Indonesia.

The dead butterfly was obtained through a butterfly conservancy.