Samantha Laurie meets the artist who creates otherworldly landscapes from kitchen cupboard products...
At the start of the 2020 lockdown, while the rest of us were buying sourdough starters and learning to quilt, East Molesey IT specialist and keen amateur photographer, Bevil Templeton-Smith purchased a set of vintage research microscopes from eBay and embarked on an ambitious new project to photograph the crystals in everyday substances – artificial sweeteners, sugar, caffeine, paracetamol and Vitamin C.
Adapting the 1970s Leitz microscopes to fit his contemporary camera, he used polarised light to create slides of familiar chemicals, melted and crystallised, which he then photographed.
This was his first ever foray into photomicrography.
Bevil Templeton-Smith
Until now, his work had focused on local landscapes and wildlife, winning The Elmbridge & Kingston Magazine’s 20th anniversary photography competition with a striking image of a swan on the riverbank.
His new approach caught the eye of Notting Hill Art Gallery, Alveston Fine Arts and 16 Chromaluxe prints of his work were included in its exhibition, Polychromo, in March 2023.
Eight of the 16 giant abstracts sold almost immediately.
Later that year, in a move that surprised everyone, he was shortlisted for the International Photography Awards, the ‘Oscars’ of the photography world, taking place in New York.
From 260,000 photos from 120 countries, his pictures were selected and he won the non-professional IPA Fine Art Photographer of the Year 2023.
“My aim was to show the unexpected layers of beauty in the world around us,” he explains.
“The process itself is thrilling – I never know what I have until the residue has cooled and cystallised. I’ve over 1500 slides now – and 16,000 photos – but it’s only sometimes that the magic happens.”
Bevil Templeton-Smith
Maelstrom
This is a photograph of a crystal of artificial sweetener mixed with acetaminophen (paracetamol). It represents a liquid turbulent battle, with a blue wash of water quelling an uprising of trouble in the orange and red. The blue is overcoming the orange, overpowering and extinguishing it.
In the run-up to my exhibition, a friend who lives in Europe told me that he would like to come to the UK to see the exhibition. He asked if Maelstrom was still available and described to me, tangentially, that there had been a conflict with a sibling for a few years.
Maelstrom seemed to my friend to pictorially describe the turmoil. When I explained that, in fact, the materials used to make the slide for the photograph were natural sweetener mixed with painkiller, the pieces fell into place.
My friend bought the artwork and commissioned a second copy, horizontally flipped. By the time it was ready, the siblings had begun repairing their relationship, and my friend gave the second version as a gift. They now each have a mirrored copy of the same photograph.
Bevil Templeton-Smith
In The Shadows
As someone who has been playing music and collecting guitars for 44 years, I see a parallel between many of my photographs and musical chords. In particular, my photographs are usually played in a major chord, yet from time to time, something appears that is in a minor chord. In The Shadows is more subtle than many of my other photos, representing an earthy, quiet and mellow view between the trees.
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Bevil Templeton-Smith
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Bevil Templeton-Smith
Columna II & Columna Reborn
I didn’t immediately see the promise of this image, and the slide was mixed into a pile of others. Later on, the image began calling out to me, and Columna II became the main photo for my entry to the International Photography Awards.
The slide remained lost – I assumed it had been cleaned and reused – but almost a year later, I put a random slide on the microscope and I recognised it straightaway. I set up a different configuration of the filters and wave plates, and Columna Reborn is the result.
Bevil Templeton-Smith
Entanglement
A friend of mine bought this at my preview. He lives not too far from me, and whenever I visit, the first thing I see is an explosion of colour in his otherwise muted white double-height entrance hall.
My work is often fiddly and slow, with heating plates, goggles, weird concoctions needing fume extractors. To see the result printed over one metre tall in a beautiful setting is always enthralling, and at the risk of sounding too proud, it is often difficult to look away.
See Insta @bevilts or bevilts.art; images sell for £850-£5,400.
