Katie Lou McCabe is a multidisciplinary artist and experimental photographer from the North York Moors, renowned for her innovative use of analogue techniques and organic materials to create evocative visual narratives. Her practice delves into themes of embodiment, ecology, and transformation, often incorporating elements such as menstrual blood, earth, and urine into her photographic processes. This approach not only challenges traditional photographic norms but also establishes a profound connection between the body, the land, and the medium itself.
Her work has been featured in a number of distinguished publications, including Film Shooters Collective, Tied to Light Collective, Visual Art Open, Artdoc Magazine, Aeonian Magazine, Analog Forever Magazine, and Alter Analog.
She has exhibited at Centrespace Gallery as part of Illumination, curated by Melanie King, Sarah Currie, and Sophie Sherwood, with support from the London Alternative Photography Collective. Her work was also included in Ethereality at the Phonebook Café, curated by Alice Campos; and in the 2022 End of Year Exhibition at the Glasgow Gallery of Photography.
'A Darkroom Exploration of Ancient Egypt and the Quantum Void' is a material and metaphysical study of origins — of light, of time, of meaning. Rooted in the analogue RA4 colour darkroom process, this body of work explores the cosmological parallels between Ancient Egyptian creation myth and contemporary quantum theory. Both systems grapple with the same fundamental question: how does something emerge from nothing?
AM I A NUDIST?
When I was a child, playing in the gully, I was told by a teacher to put my top back on.
I looked at the boys, I looked at myself (at this age there was no visible difference between our chests). “Why?” I asked. “Because you are a girl”.
I pondered this, but it didn’t stop me jumping into lakes naked on school trips.
My mother received complaints she never bothered to pass on to me.
Well yes, stood on the top of a cliff, clad in nothing but sky, there are few greater feelings.
Or lying naked in moss and pine needles and knowing that I am of the earth beneath me,
I have never felt more beautiful.
And on those dark wine nights where the party moves slightly wilder and I am in the company of all my nude friends, I look around and see how everyone’s body is as unique as their face and we are all animals of the earth playing and wonderful and I want to paint every single one of us.
You are all perfect to me.
O
OTHER WORLDS IN URINE
This is my latest series in creation - ‚Other Worlds‘.
Created through a technique called souping, this negative was soaked in urine and menstrual blood for two weeks before hand processing.
Contact me for information about using my images.
DEAR DIARY
I want to be eaten by the earth and spat into the stars. When I go walking with my friends all I want is for them to always stay, but when I am alone I feel powered by nothing but fire and I want to burn everything. How can I go on like this, thirsty enough to break open the earth and drink from its core.