Biography
Ryan Foerster (Newmarket, Canada, 1983) practices a fetching, free-spirited form of photography in which mistakes and accidents are valued and much is left to chance. He has his own quirky process, one that takes place both inside the darkroom and out in nature.
Typically he will place photosensitive paper on the ground outdoors and cover it with dirt, leaves or, as in “Giant Compost,” food scraps. These intriguing works (and others made with corroded mirrors) link photography, long associated with preservation, to decay. And they have a lush, painterly messiness that’s difficult to resist, even when they evoke floods and other disasters; in “Sudbury, Brighton Beach etc.,” a print lies on the floor under a scattering of rocks and slag.
– Karen Rosenberg
From the text "Ryan Foerster", The New York Times, 2012.