Lumen prints are unique in that sunlight creates color on exposure papers used in traditional darkrooms for printing in black and white. The colors vary by time of day, length of exposure and will show a passage of time if left out long enough for light shadows to be recorded.
Because you cannot chemically fix lumen prints without the colors changing or disappearing, I use a scanner to digitally fix the print in time. The use of a scanner adds to a larger conversation about time, melding a very early photographic process (lumen printing) with a modern technology (scanner).
The light from the sun leaks under objects placed on paper creating unique shapes and colors. An image is made solely by how clouds and sun move light over the space and around the objects. These abstract color compositions form an ethereal world more felt than understood. I understand these images as metaphors for situations where transition happens and you land in a totally different place. Everything evolves.
Lumen printing is playful, because it is teasing you. It pushes you out of your comfort zone. You have to accept you will not have control and try to play with this unknown, try to make progress together with the sun, clouds and time.
Title for this series is “push me pull you” based on the fantasy llama with two heads in Dr Doolittle stories. The Pushmi-Pullyu is an unusual animal, not found in the real world, with a head at each end of its body, allowing it to look in two directions at the same time.
What happens when you pay attention? For the span of one month in summer, I collected an invasive species of water plant, soaked it in cyanotype chemistry and captured an essence of image and water on film. I had never worked at this scale before, so for much of the project I felt I was stumbling through the unknown, blindly surrendering to whatever fortune or accident would bestow. Water Thyme was created in direct sunlight with varied exposure times, at the mercy of whatever each day brought me.
The language of photography is about relationships of light and dark. Water and time are related too, frozen water expands like time and time like water has a boiling point. By using film for this series, a new reality appears revealing a shadow world. The resulting images are an exploration of absence/ presence and also a reverie of an invisible world. They are blind compositions as the project is left open to intuition. During the long exposures, it felt a bit like time, like water, can be stolen. Heightened attention through stillness and a focus on increments of time inspired ideas about awareness. This series tells a subtle yet universal story contemplating fear, loss and our place in the universe.
For several years, I have been making abstract photograms of materials found in nature. Water Thyme is another name for Hydrilla, one of the most invasive aquatic species in Lake Cayuga, Ithaca, NY. Into the Wild is both a non-fiction book and adventure film with a soundtrack by Eddie Vedder as his debut solo album. Big Hard Sun is the top hit from this album. Lyrics to this song reference the consequences of human actions when at odds with nature and accepting the hard truths of life. Hydrilla has some biological benefits but is notorious for creating dense mats that choke out native plants and cause fish kills. To go “into the wild” is to experience life but also to flirt with death.
What might that look like? Almost all my work begins with language rather than optics. Water Thyme is a site specific installation made in Ithaca, NY activated by access to the factory space at The Soil Factory and vast expanses of Hydrilla spreading throughout Lake Cayuga. Fear sets a narrative for any invasive species, especially one that can grow on average over an inch per day. Each section of this series is a reflection of time, place, weather and photo alchemy as imagery develops, slowly or quickly, in the variegated light of the sun.
Solar Snapshot is the working title of my latest camera less photography images. I use black and white silver gelatin photography paper, plant material and sunlight to capture ethereal images floating in color fields created by chemistry of plant material laid onto the paper and exposure in sunlight. When the UV index is high with little cloud cover images appear very quickly. A snapshot is an informal photograph taken quickly as well as a recording of a place or situation. These prints are fugitive image captures of sun and location which will vanish over time unless I wash the prints in a bath of photography fixer. Instead of using a fixer bath I scan my images, then store in a dark location. I know they will vanish over time which is fine as part of my process is to accept transformation as inevitable. I am astonished by how much color can be coaxed from black and white paper, a metaphor for how nothing needs to be absolute, and change is always possible.
I’m always interested in alternative photography lenses for digital camera bodies. My zone plate lens is of particular interest since it creates a flare around the object being photographed. Make Some Friends grew out of an idea to use Victorian flatware to make stick figures. I construct the figures using found flatware from various sources. In the nineteenth century there were many fashionable foods and a special utensil for each one. A tiny ladle for the perfect dollop of mustard or a miniature lettuce fork are not widely used today. It was not polite to touch food with fingers so special spoons would be provided for a dessert bonbon or mint as well. A variety of tongs was required for foods such as asparagus, sugar cubes and petit-four pastry.
Due to 2020/2021 global pandemic it has been difficult to see friends in real time. These portraits of small figures made of flatware components from another era glow due to refracted light from thousands of little scratches in the metal. They are somewhat otherworldly due to halos created by the zone plate lens. My new friends are engaging in their robotic form and strangely comforting to construct. This work speaks to a world where we are all becoming more familiar with small robots and less human contact. Some robots today are creations that mimic life and are helpful as companions. Using old world components to create twentieth century friends brings old objects to new life in a friendly form glowing up at me.
Seasonal is an ongoing photography series of meditations on beauty and fear. “Beauty is the mystery of life” is a famous quote by Agnes Martin that inspired me to make digital images combining the most banal and commonplace subjects of flowers and snowflakes. All physical matter has a mysterious shelf life, some long, others short. Everything vanishes at some point like snow and flowers often are part of a passing of life.
Instead of arranging flowers in a vase, I take them apart and use the components to make snowflake designs. There is a reversal of spring to winter by use of these materials and concept. I’ve always been intrigued with snowflakes. Each one is a unique crystalline form, vanishes by melting and presents as pure white. Flowers also enchant me with their formal structures, short lives and amazing assortment of colors. White is the combination of all colors while black is the absence of color. By using my scanner as a camera I capture extraordinary detail and rich color that leaps out in contrast to the black background. Making these works is labor intensive and profoundly meditative. I try to make pictures that capture the spirit of both subjects, embracing elements of design and intention. The final images are a celebration of brief lives incorporating complete beauty.
I’ve been making photographs since my childhood having grown up in a home with a darkroom. The slow roll of the scanner revealing an image composed on the glass is reminiscent of how an image would appear to float to the surface in a developing tray. In later years when the family darkroom vanished in a flood holding decades of memory and experiences well as physical equipment I feared I would never have another way to slow process in a fast digital world. Fear and beauty come in many guises both inevitable in anyone’s life.