Abstract:
LA Botanical is an ongoing project, massive and perhaps unachievable in its full potential scope, to document each plant that grows in Los Angeles for which there is a documented use - be it food, medicine, weapon, abortive, analgesic, fuel, stimulant, building material, deadly toxin or mind altering entheogen. The plants are documented as wet-plate Ambrotypes, an anachronistic photographic form ubiquitous the 1850's-1890s, the period during in which Los Angeles grew from a dusty town of 1400 inhabitants to a major metropolitan center. The project is an attempt to reconcile Campbell's own rural background with her life here in Los Angeles, one of the most sprawling and unsustainable metropolises on earth. LA Botanical operates simultaneously as map, inventory, and survival guide to the city of Los Angeles. It has the potential to reveal who lives here, from where they originate, what they value, how they eat, worship, heal, harm, travel, clothe themselves, seek insight or achieve oblivion. It also serves as a tool or guide - enabling its audience to see Los Angeles, not as a desiccated industrial wasteland into which resources must flow, but as a field of abundant life that might be harvested to satisfy our needs.