Daily Bread is a series of Anthotypes ~ photos made with plant juice emulsions, which can take weeks to expose under direct sunlight. The photographic series brings to light domestic labourers of Portuguese and Azorean descent who endure physically demanding jobs to put food on the table, and whose work is often invisible. The light-sensitive emulsions are extracted from plants used in traditional Azorean cuisine, such as beet root, spinach leaf, red cabbage, black berry, red wine, and onion skin. Most emulsions are squeezed out using a juicer. Half of the Anthotypes are of immigrants working, while their faces are hidden. The other half are solely of their hands, palms up, as if asking for recognition of their labour and personal identity. I embrace the ephemeral nature of Anthotypes, in that they cannot be fixed and will fade if further exposed to light. For this reason, Daily Bread is exhibited under dim lighting, which references the invisibility of the manual labourers. Visitors wait several minutes for their eyesight to adjust to the dim lighting, until the imagery is revealed.

Daily Bread is generously sponsored by Ontario Arts Council.

.