almudena romero cultivates photography through living crops and ecological processes

almudena romero grows monumental eye in toulouse field

British-Spanish artist Almudena Romero transforms 11,000 square meters of agricultural land into what is believed to be the world’s largest living photograph. Developed in collaboration with the public research institute INRAE near Toulouse, Farming Photographs reveals the image of a human eye cultivated directly through crops, photosynthesis, and time itself. Seen from above, the field becomes a giant gaze emerging from the landscape, shaped not by ink or pixels, but by wheat varieties, plant pigments, weather conditions, and growth cycles. ‘I wanted to create an image that could, in a sense, look back at us.’ Romero says.

Romero grows the image directly within the field. Sown in October 2025, the work uses different crop varieties selected for their chromatic variations, densities, and responses to light. Together, these subtle tonal shifts form the contours of an eye that gradually becomes visible during the growing season.

The project builds on the nineteenth-century anthotype process, one of the earliest experiments of photography with natural pigments. But instead of extracting pigments from plants, Romero allows the plants themselves to produce the image. ‘The field itself becomes the photographic surface, and the plants perform the image through photosynthesis, growth and chromatic variation,’ the artist explains.

For Romero, photography begins with light. ‘Photo-graphos means writing with light,’ she notes. ‘What defines photography is the action of light, not the apparatus.’ In Farming Photographs, that light-writing takes shape biologically, through living matter responding to environmental conditions.

all images courtesy of Almudena Romero

a gaze returned from the land

Trained as a specialist in nineteenth-century photographic processes, Romero’s wider practice expands photography beyond the camera and its industrial materials. Working with plants, photosynthesis, photoperiodicity, and organic pigments, the artist creates living images that grow, transform and eventually disappear, treating photography as an ecological and biological process. Across installations, land art interventions and plant-based experiments, her work questions extractive systems of image-making while proposing more regenerative relationships between photography, time and the living world.

The eye draws from the natural phenomenon of ocular mimicry, where animals evolve eye-like markings to deter predators. Romero repositions this strategy at the scale of the Earth. If nature were to reflect the gaze of its greatest threat back onto itself, Almudena Romero suggests, it would take the form of a human eye.

Composed from features across different races, genders, and ages, the image avoids representing a single individual. Instead, it becomes a collective portrait of humanity suspended within the agricultural landscape. At the same time, the eye cannot fully be perceived from the ground. Its scale exceeds ordinary human vision, only becoming legible through aerial views and drone footage.

The project foregrounds the fragility of image-making and agriculture under climate instability. During the development of the first iteration near Toulouse, extreme rainfall and flooding placed the work at risk, exposing the cultivated image to the same environmental vulnerabilities faced by contemporary farming. Farming Photographs remains materially dependent on weather, soil conditions, seasonal cycles and plant health, allowing the work to function as a photographic experiment, agricultural process and reflection on the uncertain future of cultivation in the context of climate change. ‘Farming Photographs proposes that the future of photography might already have been present at its beginning: in plants, in light, in living pigments, and in the possibility of images grown rather than captured,’ the artist explains.

the pixelated human eye is cultivated through different wheat varieties and chromatic crop variations

shaped by climate uncertainty

Part of what gives the work its urgency is its vulnerability. During the winter of 2026, the field experienced severe flooding following record rainfall across southern France. For weeks, the project appeared close to collapse.

‘To spend years developing a work only to see it mirror so precisely the environmental reality it addresses, to the point of possibly not happening at all, has been devastating. And revealing,’ Romero reflects. ‘This is agriculture today: crops fail year after year because of climate change.’

The artwork is materially exposed to ecological instability. Its visibility depends entirely on conditions farmers increasingly struggle to predict or control rainfall, soil saturation, plant health, sunlight, and seasonal shifts. In this sense, the work physically inhabits climate anxiety.

The near-failure of the project also foregrounds the fragile relationship between food systems and climate change. Some traditional European wheat varieties used in the field struggled to survive the unusually wet conditions, exposing how agricultural histories rooted in specific climates are becoming increasingly unstable.

the living photograph becomes increasingly visible through seasonal shifts

between agriculture, science, and photography

Developed alongside scientists and agricultural researchers at INRAE, the project moves between photography, land art, cultivation, and ecological research. Romero translated the image into a grid of 1,350 agricultural plots, each assigned a crop variety according to its tonal behavior. The resulting sowing plan functions almost like a biological pixel map stretched across the field, a form of image-making rooted in care, patience, and interdependence. The photograph grows, changes, risks failure, and eventually disappears.

The work will remain visible through summer 2026 before being harvested in August. Afterwards, the wheat will be milled into flour and redistributed locally, allowing the project to continue beyond its visual existence and return materially to the communities and ecologies that sustained it.

‘Rather than cutting leaves or petals, rather than extracting pigments, I wanted to plant the photograph,’ the artist says. ‘With Farming Photographs, the field itself becomes the photographic surface.’

the artist stands within the Living Photographic field