glimmer

My seires, glimmer, involves photographing trees in Chicago at night using artificial lighting to investigate the sensory and psychological dimensions of darkness. I explore darkness' capacity for stillness and introspection.

Darkness holds many meanings for me. It is on one hand a reminder of my past and my battle with depression, but has simultaneously evolved into something more optimistic as I’ve learned to find peace in the stillness of nighttime. At the core of my work is my interest in understanding darkness, viewing it not as an absence, but rather as a form of presence. Darkness is alive. It has weight and texture, and carries a sense of quiet revelation. I use photography to capture dark landscapes. My work is rooted in this space and invites the audience into landscapes that might otherwise go unseen. I spent years looking in the woods for solace, and my work shows me returning for similar purposes, ritualistically. 

I explore darkness through photographing nature at different times of day and night, utilising different editing and lighting techniques to bring attention to shadows and voids. I use high resolution digital imaging to transform in detail spaces that feel quiet into ones that are loud. My process includes going on long walks in the forest or at night, in parks, until I find what I’m looking for. I create tactile, large scale black and white prints on matte paper that each feature deep blacks which come out on the paper looking like charcoal. The tangible nature of my physical prints is important to the ultimate experience I am creating of inviting one to enter these landscapes. In some of my work I manipulate images taken during the day to create underexposed, atmospheric depictions of the landscapes I actually photographed. 

In a recent body of work, linger, I photographed barren natural landscapes in the depths of Chicago’s winter, intentionally underexposing each image to bring attention to darkness and shadows because I am curious about the tension and vulnerability which accompanies them and mirrors my own tension and vulnerability. These landscapes were like mirrors to me, and each image served as a self-portrait.

The series I’m currently working on, glimmer, is shot entirely at nighttime and is comprised of several 43” x 58” prints. I’m intrigued by using this scale to envelope the viewer in the spaces I’m creating, and making them feel conscious of their own smallness. With this work, I have been experimenting with using different light sources in a gestural manner to create individual works that function as characters on their own. After making linger, I felt I wanted to try and photograph at night to see how that would change my process and experience in these natural spaces.

Darkness is vulnerable and powerful, intimate and infinite. I think about my photographs not as depictions of darkness, but as a spaces for encounter. I hope that each image opens a space large enough for one’s emotions to echo back at them. I am most interested in creating something that feels visceral and true, in a way that allows one to have an unmediated encounter with their own interiority.