Photos as a living organism: Riya Panwar reinvents the photographic canvas

There are so many photographers who play around with the form, from ambient textures such as long exposure, to bokeh, to alternative photographers who use “camera-less” techniques such as cyanotypes. But what London-based photographer and printmaker Riya Panwar does goes even further – she asks the question “can photography become a living organism?”. Drawn to processes that feel alive, Riya chooses canvases in the forms of apples, leaves and soil. Creating shadowy printed scenes on plants and fruit, Riya questions the relationship between human creation and natural creation, using thought-provoking photographic processes to bake experiences of her life onto nature. “My work doesn’t focus on documenting the natural world, it collaborates with it. I am part of that nature, just as you are,” says Riya. “There is a symbiotic interdependence that must be acknowledged, where soil, plants, bacteria, fungi, and even time itself become co-creators in the work.”

Riya is inspired by a community built around the London Alternative Photography Collective, who encourage experimentation in the form. “Nature and sustainability guide my approach, not as visual trends, but as mindsets,” says Riya. “They don’t always appear instantly or visibly; they arrive slowly, when the vision aligns.” Riya can take the cliché of an eye and transpose it into the body of a leaf, giving it a new lease of life, an act of humanisation that is nearly impossible to dismiss. With this, the canvas becomes difficult to ignore as a living form, and even if the material degrades, the work lives on in the ritualistic approach. One project that encapsulates this is Germination, which reflects on the idea of growth, literally and metaphorically. In other words, how long it takes to “become good”. Whereas many see the final product – the canvas that has turned lush and green, Riya sees what came before: the hesitation, the patience, the quiet unfolding. This isn’t photography in the strictest sense, where the final product is all that matters, it’s photography literally rooted in the process.