The ethics of non-extractive looking
cleidi hearn
Looking is often described as passive, as though vision were simply the intake of information. In practice, it is never neutral. To look is to select, to prioritise, to organise what becomes visible. It shapes what matters and what disappears.
When directed toward plants, this act is frequently guided by use. Plants are approached as resources, decoration, or scenery. They are valued for what they provide or how they appear. In each case, something is taken from them — function, image, meaning — and the plant is reduced to a role.
A non-extractive encounter begins by suspending these demands. It does not search for usefulness or symbolism. It does not ask the plant to explain itself. Instead, it allows perception to remain open and unforced. The plant is met without instruction.
Such attention requires slowness. Contemporary visual culture encourages speed: images are scanned, sorted, and replaced almost instantly. Value is tied to immediacy and clarity. Under these conditions, slow looking becomes deliberate. It asks the viewer to stay longer than necessary, to notice what does not announce itself.
Plants reward this duration. Their changes are gradual and often subtle: a slight bend in a stem, the dulling of a leaf, the shift of tone across a surface. These are not events that compete for attention. They emerge only through patience. Time becomes part of what is seen.
This way of looking does not aim for neutrality. Every encounter is shaped by context and history. The task is simply to soften the impulse to interpret or control. Without the pressure to decode or categorise, the plant can appear as a presence rather than an image. Presence here is straightforward: a being that exists in its own time, not organised around our expectations.
This posture also resists two familiar habits of seeing. One turns everything into narrative, seeking explanation or message. The other turns everything into spectacle, seeking intensity or impact. Both draw the subject back into human frameworks. Remaining with what is there — without conclusion or climax — offers another possibility. It allows the plant to exist without being converted into story or display.
Attention, in this sense, becomes an ethical act. It gives time without demanding return. It recognises without appropriating. It observes without transforming the plant into symbol or resource. The exchange is minimal and reciprocal: the viewer offers duration; the plant offers presence.
Within this framework, the role of the viewer changes. Instead of decoding, the task is remaining — long enough for variation to emerge, for small differences to register, for time itself to become visible. Looking becomes less about understanding and more about staying.
Non-extractive looking is not a technique or a rule. It is an attitude toward perception. It asks what might happen if plants were encountered without being used for anything beyond the encounter itself. Under such conditions, what usually recedes into background can stand forward. Not as decoration. Not as symbol. Simply as a living presence.
