Eugene Cecil Ogden's field guide to the plants of Lake George
REVISITED Fifty years later by Lauren Comito, October 19, 2026
Eugene Cecil Ogden's field guide to the plants of Lake George was published in 1976. Fifty years later, Lauren Comito took it back to the lake.
At Huletts Landing, Comito collaborated with Jenn Dierdorf, Yan Cynthia Chen, and Anne Schaefer to collect and document local flora using lumen printing and phytograms which are two early photographic processes where, subsequently, the plant’s chemistry reacts with silver salts on photo paper leaving ghostly impressions behind. Comito describes these soft, enigmatic images as "energetic portraits" that capture a plant’s material composition rather than merely its surface appearance.
Their zine, Field Guide of the Plants of Lake George, NY, blends a standard field guide with a type of scavenger hunt. Visual choices emphasize ecological shifts: post-Ogden arrivals names are italicized, the names of non-native species curve across the page, and the plants scientific descriptions sit in structured blocks. Comito plans to return annually with different artists across various seasons, expanding the project into a comprehensive book.
Grounded in a childhood habit of dissecting plants to understand them, a soothing yet destructive ritual for Comito, which she views as a form of cannibalization; Comito’s work inherently explores the tension between care and damage. In this interview, Comito (who also runs the Goldey Projects) discusses the chemistry of phytograms and lumen prints, Lake George’s evolving flora over the past 50 years, and the nuances of stewardship through artistic harvest.
Tussle: Why a field guide, and why a zine? What does the field guide format offer this project, and why keep it a zine rather than making it a book?
Lauren Comito: I think of this zine as a chapter book, part of a much larger project. The goal is to identify plants, which aligns with what a field guide is, and a field guide is also portable. I chose a zine over a book because zine production and self-publishing are much more affordable. Every year I will create new lumen prints and phytograms at a different time of year with a new group of people. The results will vary a great deal, since the season, and how it affects the plants and weather, has so much to do with the resulting image. I hope to someday publish a book with all of these chapters (zines) included.
Tussle: Your notes explain that the print's colors come from phenolic compounds, the plant's own defense chemistry. So the image is literally made by the plant defending itself. Does that change how you see these as portraits?
Lauren Comito: That's an interesting interpretation, but I wouldn't phrase it that way. These compounds come in many forms and serve different purposes. Phenolic compounds help a plant stand upright and protect it from UV light or drought. Flavonoids, a type of phenolic compound, give flowers their vibrant color to attract pollinators. Salicylic acid acts as a signal that coordinates systemic acquired resistance against disease. Many antioxidants, which are useful to plants and humans alike, are also phenolic compounds. These compounds aid in the plant's survival, and their strength varies depending on need. I use the word "portrait" because the lumen print is an energetic portrait: it records the interaction between the plant's compounds and the silver salts in the emulsion of the photo paper, which are human-made but also derived from the earth. It's a portrait of the chemical reaction between plants and this human-made substance.
Tussle: The prints are very ethereal, with less definition than a conventional photograph. You write that they are "otherworldly and not at all what you would expect." Is that softness deliberate? What does it do for the images?
Lauren Comito: The clarity of the image comes from the amount of pressure applied in the making process: the more pressure, the more detail. Some plants are stacked on top of each other, which creates space between the plant and the surface of the photo paper, and that accounts for the softness. To be honest, the softness was partly a result of our learning. Each artist's technique varies, and some of us were learning these techniques for the first time. Still, I embraced it, because I wanted these images to feel otherworldly. Plants have a secret world of their own that we are only beginning to understand. I also think the softness invites closer looking.
Tussle: Eugene Cecil Ogden's original guide is fifty years old now, and you note that many plants prevalent around Lake George today were not in it. How did you handle what has arrived, or disappeared, in those fifty years?
Lauren Comito: I was prepared for some change within the ecosystem. Plants are always on the move, and ecosystems shift with climate change and with transport by wind, people, or animals. The very fabric of an environment is always changing. Ogden's original guide was a frame of reference, but we in no way found all the plants in it. We only scratched the surface, which is why this project will require several years to complete. It may be impossible to complete due to the fact that the environment is always changing. Plants missing from our findings may not have disappeared. The time of year matters, and this was a short-term project with limited resources. We identified plants that weren't in the guide using books from Goldey's library and online sources. Good old Google Lens was helpful, along with some plant identification apps. Plants that were not in the guide are italicized to show the difference. Next year I hope to involve the New York State Museum and perhaps a botanist to aid in this project.
Tussle: You frame the zine as a kind of scavenger hunt. How does that work for the reader? How do the shifting page orientations, the Latin plant names, and the meandering texts play into it?
Lauren Comito: This zine field guide is a scavenger hunt because people can use it to look at their environment and find the plants referenced. I wanted the book to be interactive and dynamic, which accounts for the shifts in orientation and the contrast in text. These lumen prints are like collages of plants, with a lot of repetition from page to page. As humans, we learn through repetition. The Latin names tell you about each specific plant. The first word is the genus, and the second identifies the species. Latin names can also tell you about a plant's qualities and attributes, such as physical traits, color, habitat, and use.
Tussle: Your notes describe a childhood spent digging in the dirt, collecting and pulling plants apart to understand them. How does that early relationship with plants feed into this project?
Lauren Comito: Humans are of nature and are fascinated by nature. I was thinking about how this early memory is tied to an aggressive, even violent, relationship between humans and plants. A child willingly participates in the destruction of plants while gaining knowledge. Maybe it's a kind of cannibalizing. We see human impact on the natural world everywhere, since we are living in the Anthropocene. To this day, I still uproot and dissect plants. I find the act soothing, and I do it everywhere I visit. I am trying to better understand the very material nature of the plant. In my studio practice, I am always trying to make sense of the relationship between our built environment (the things we make) and how the natural world operates and evolves. How do we obtain knowledge of our world and how does that inform decision making, design, and relationships? I need to continue to think about this more!
Tussle: The language around plants, native, non-native, invasive, naturalization, mirrors how we talk about people. In the zine you let the non-native and invasive species "follow an organic path." What does that look like on the page?
Lauren Comito: The path for these non-native plants is curvilinear and meandering. They are travelers that have, over time, emigrated from one place to another. This contrasts with the hard-edged rectangles of the scientific text. I wanted to show the difference between what is established in a location and documented scientifically, and what has been introduced as a newcomer to the environment and happens to be thriving. Sometimes a non-native species that was once considered invasive becomes "naturalized," meaning it has established itself and may even benefit the ecosystem and help maintain a desired symbiosis. How do we learn to live with invasive or non native plants that goes beyond wanting to reverse time or eradication?
Tussle: How did you choose the other artists you collaborated with, and how did the collaboration work at Huletts Landing? The project is framed as artists acting as stewards, but the process itself involves picking and pressing the plants. What does stewardship mean here?
Lauren Comito: I personally invited artists who had already participated in a Goldey Retreat, so they were familiar with the area and appreciated this location. The other collaborators are Jenn Dierdorf, Yan Cynthia Chen, and Anne Schaefer. We went to different sites together, collected specimens, and worked together on site or in the studio. Admittedly, the relationship to stewardship is complicated. To reveal these findings, we had to uproot and kill the plants we used. We did our best to forage responsibly. This zine is a record of our experience and our findings. I am very inspired by the 19th-century botanist Anna Atkins, who created the first photography book of cyanotypes of plants, including algae. I also think the act of actively looking at and identifying these plants feels important at this time. We are dedicating our time to documenting these plant species, including learning their Latin names, which helps us better understand the use and attributes of the plants.
