Fine Art Photography Daily

Botanical Photography: The Basics and Moving Beyond the Basics: Oriana Poindexter: Cascadia Coast Exposures by September 30, 2026

©Oriana Poindexter, Cascadia Coast Pressings Study 2, 2025, Cyanotype on paper, toned with cyanobacteria. 30 x 22 inches., : Original cyanotype on paper toned with cyanobacteria. Pressed algae collected by the artist during an artist residency at OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center in summer 2025. The species in the image represent the three types of algae – red, green and brown – and the resulting print was then toned with cyanobacteria collected from Devil’s Lake, Oregon (Anabeana spp.; Microcysitis spp.).

©Oriana Poindexter, Cascadia Coast Pressings Study 4, 2025, Salt print on paper. 30 in x 22 in. , Details: Original salted paper print on paper. Pressed algae collected by the artist during an artist residency at OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center in summer 2025. The species in the image represent brown algae.

Oriana Poindexter is an Italian-American photographic artist and marine scientist whose academic background spans photography, fisheries, and marine conservation. She dives, photographs, and collects specimens to create photo-based works that document the ocean’s shifting ecosystems. Her process, rooted in both traditional and alternative photographic techniques, results in light-formed records that engage viewers in contemplating the relationship between humans and the sea.

Poindexter earned an M.A.S. in Marine Biodiversity & Conservation from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, and a B.A. in Visual Arts from Princeton University. Her work has been published by Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and exhibited at Laguna Art Museum, Oceanside Museum of Art, and Center for Fine Art Photography, among others. She creates exhibits for museums and aquariums, with a year-long solo exhibit currently on view at the Catalina Museum for Art & History. Her works are held in public and private collections across the United States and in Europe.

©Oriana Poindexter, Stephanocystis Study 6, 2025, Lumen photogram on silver gelatin. 20 in x 16 in., Details: Original lumen print created with bladder chain kelp (Stephanocystis osmundacea) collected by the artist from the intertidal zone in Port Orford, Oregon, on June 9, 2025. Created during an artist residency at OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center in summer 2025.

Cascadia Coast Exposures

These photograms use the physicality of sun printing to explore ideas about discovery, documentation, and care for the ocean. As a human, I can only be underwater for so long, and creating this work allows me to continue my observations after I’ve returned to land. Informed by my career in marine science, I think of my work as joining a long line of women, led by Anna Atkins, who build knowledge about the ocean through close observation and acts of devotion that ignore the divide between art and science.

I freedive in the kelp forest and collect what it shares with me. I compose what I have collected, kelp, seaweed, and other marine specimens, directly onto light-sensitive substrates and expose them to the sun. Giant kelp can grow more than one hundred feet long, and printed at life-size, a single strand can easily span the length of a gallery. Beginning with cyanotype and expanding to salt, Van Dyke, and lumen printing, the pieces vary in chemistry, color, and size, but are all records of contact, facilitated by my physical body. Reflecting the diversity of the forest, the scale ranges from intimate works on paper to large-scale textile pieces that fill vertical space.

Gathered over months and years from the same waters, the results accumulate into a portrait of place, told by the life within it. This work falls under the general title The Blue Forest, an ongoing study of Southern California’s giant kelp forests that culminated in a multimedia solo exhibit at Catalina Museum for Art & History in 2025. Filling an octagonal gallery, eight panels of silk hang from ceiling to floor, surrounded by a school of 900 sardines and activated by an underwater soundscape, enveloping viewers into the kelp forest.

Cascadia Coast Exposures marks an evolution, both geographically and technically. During a residency on the Oregon coast at Hatfield Marine Science Center in 2025, I began incorporating digital negatives and preserved specimens to extend my field of view to include the microscopic with the macroscopic.

©Oriana Poindexter, Great Upwelling Study 4, 2025, Cyanotype on tissue paper backed with imitation gold leaf. 13 in x 32 in., : Original cyanotype on paper created with bull kelp (Nereocystis leutkeana) collected by the artist freediving off Cape Foulweather, Oregon, on July 9, 2025. Dive with PhD candidate Wave Moretto at her long term kelp forest monitoring site, during an artist residency at OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center in summer 2025. Contact print also incorporates digital negative images of plankton captured by the OSU Plankton Ecology Lab and their ISIIS device (In Situ Ichthyoplankton Imaging System) off the Oregon coast between 0 and 100m of depth, courtesy of Elena Conser, PhD Candidate.

©Oriana Poindexter, Great Upwelling Study 8, 2025, Cyanotype on rice paper backed with imitation gold leaf. 12 in x 9 in. , Original cyanotype on paper with digital negative images of plankton captured by the OSU Plankton Ecology Lab and their ISIIS device (In Situ Ichthyoplankton Imaging System) off the Oregon coast between 0 and 100m of depth, courtesy of Elena Conser, PhD Candidate

©Oriana Poindexter, Great Upwelling Study 9, 2025, Cyanotype on rice paper backed with imitation gold leaf. 12 in x 9 in. , Original cyanotype on paper with digital negative images of plankton captured by the OSU Plankton Ecology Lab and their ISIIS device (In Situ Ichthyoplankton Imaging System) off the Oregon coast between 0 and 100m of depth, courtesy of Elena Conser, PhD Candidate.

©Oriana Poindexter, Dictyota Study 11, 2024, Cyanotype on paper, diptych. 24 in x 18 in. , Original cyanotype photogram created with Dictyota spp, collected by the artist while freediving off Descanso Beach, Catalina Island, California on May 13, 2024. Two panels (each 18 x 12 inches) exposed simultaneously.

©Oriana Poindexter, Giant Kelp Study 52, 2022, Cyanotype on paper. 30 in x 22 in. , Original cyanotype photogram created with giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) collected by the artist while surfing off Tabletops, Solana Beach, CA September 14, 2022.

©Oriana Poindexter, Giant Kelp Study 115, 2024, Vandyke brown on paper. 30 in x 22 in. , Details: Original vandyke brown photogram created with giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera), collected by the artist while freediving off Descanso Beach, Catalina Island on May 2, 2024.

©Oriana Poindexter, Elkhorn Kelp Study 3, 2022, Cyanotype on paper. 50 in x 38 in. , Original cyanotype photogram created with elkhorn kelp (Pelagophycus porra) collected by the artist while freediving off Point Loma. California on January 9, 2022.

©Oriana Poindexter, Elkhorn Kelp Study 2, 2022, Cyanotype on paper. 50 in x 38 in. , Original cyanotype photogram created with elkhorn kelp (Pelagophycus porra) collected by the artist while freediving off Point Loma. California on January 9, 2022.

Installation Images by Oriana Poindexter

The Blue Forest

Solo exhibit by Oriana Poindexter

Catalina Museum for Art & History, Avalon, California

On view November 8 2025 – October 11 2026

The Catalina Museum for Art & History presents The Blue Forest: An Immersive Installation by Marine Scientist and Artist Oriana Poindexter.

Created by hand using historic photographic processes, The Blue Forest features life-size cyanotype images of native marine flora,  collected by Poindexter while freediving just off Catalina’s shoreline and contact printed onto flowing silk panels. Visitors are invited to wander through a labyrinth of luminous, ocean-blue silk that depicts giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera), elk kelp (Pelagophycus porra) and other local species. The exhibition transports visitors into the underwater world of Catalina Island’s iconic kelp forests without ever getting wet.

Both meditative and educational, the exhibition bridges art, science and sensory experience. As light filters through the translucent panels and 900 hand-made sardines swirl around the gallery walls, visitors are immersed in an environment that evokes the beauty and biodiversity of the island’s underwater ecosystems. For the first time in her work, Poindexter incorporates an underwater soundscape built from her own ocean recordings, deepening the sense of being submerged.

©Oriana Poindexter, The Blue Forest, 2025 An immersive installation piece composed of 8 panels of hanging silks. Created during a residency on Catalina Island in April 2025, each silk panel has been cyanotype printed by hand using seaweed specimens collected by the artist freediving around the island. Each is a unique, handmade photographic object with a life-size image of seaweed species native to Catalina Island. Two of the panels include human elements. Dimensions vary. Each panel is approximately 54″ x 130″.

©Oriana Poindexter, The Blue Forest, 2025 An immersive installation piece composed of 8 panels of hanging silks. Created during a residency on Catalina Island in April 2025, each silk panel has been cyanotype printed by hand using seaweed specimens collected by the artist freediving around the island. Each is a unique, handmade photographic object with a life-size image of seaweed species native to Catalina Island. Two of the panels include human elements. Dimensions vary. Each panel is approximately 54″ x 130″.

©Oriana Poindexter, The Blue Forest, 2025 An immersive installation piece composed of 8 panels of hanging silks. Created during a residency on Catalina Island in April 2025, each silk panel has been cyanotype printed by hand using seaweed specimens collected by the artist freediving around the island. Each is a unique, handmade photographic object with a life-size image of seaweed species native to Catalina Island. Two of the panels include human elements. Dimensions vary. Each panel is approximately 54″ x 130″.

©Oriana Poindexter, The Blue Forest, 2025 An immersive installation piece composed of 8 panels of hanging silks. Created during a residency on Catalina Island in April 2025, each silk panel has been cyanotype printed by hand using seaweed specimens collected by the artist freediving around the island. Each is a unique, handmade photographic object with a life-size image of seaweed species native to Catalina Island. Two of the panels include human elements. Dimensions vary. Each panel is approximately 54″ x 130″.

©Oriana Poindexter, The Blue Forest, 2025 An immersive installation piece composed of 8 panels of hanging silks. Created during a residency on Catalina Island in April 2025, each silk panel has been cyanotype printed by hand using seaweed specimens collected by the artist freediving around the island. Each is a unique, handmade photographic object with a life-size image of seaweed species native to Catalina Island. Two of the panels include human elements. Dimensions vary. Each panel is approximately 54″ x 130″.

©Oriana Poindexter, Sardine Spiral, 2025 Installation piece for ‘The Blue Forest’ at the Catalina Museum for Art and History. School of sardines installed in a spiraling formation on the gallery walls. The school is composed of cyanotype printed images of individual sardines (~700 pieces). Inspired by experiences freediving in and amongst schools of sardines, anchovies, and mackerel at Lover’s Cove and Descanso Beach, Catalina Island, in May 2024. Each print varies in size, between 7″ to 10″ in length and 2″ to 3″ in width.

©Oriana Poindexter, The Blue Forest, 2025 An immersive installation piece composed of 8 panels of hanging silks. Created during a residency on Catalina Island in April 2025, each silk panel has been cyanotype printed by hand using seaweed specimens collected by the artist freediving around the island. Each is a unique, handmade photographic object with a life-size image of seaweed species native to Catalina Island. Two of the panels include human elements. Dimensions vary. Each panel is approximately 54″ x 130″.

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