The natural world has always inspired my work. Long intrigued by its processes,
I have come to value that nature's more subtle and interesting beauty
is often beyond the visible. As such, most of my work is an investigation
of the transient and often unseen aspects of the natural world.
These
two bodies of work are particularly concerned with water, an element that
has captivated me with both its physical and ephemeral qualities.
Sentient
The ocean is simultaneously dangerous and beautiful. I was attracted to
this duality and began to photograph the waves at night, a time when the
ocean feels the most unknown and un-navigable.
Although the ocean is physically
the same at night as it is in the day, our perception of it changes in
the dark. Unable to see the water at night, we feel uncertain of our surroundings.
Even photography, a medium of light, captured only the white crash of
waves, the lone visible sign of the water in the darkness. The white seemed
sentient and in a sense was the mark by which we could know the ocean
at night.
Waves visualize the power of the ocean and in the black void
of night the swirls of white in
Sentient hint at that unseen energy we
know in our minds to be present.
Sea Change
The variations in the images of
Sea Change, a series of palladium-based
photograms, reference the complex character of the ocean. Never on its
own, water is always in combination with other elements or in various
transitional phases. Water contains and transports many materials that
are not visible to the human eye, including sand, minerals, and other
sediments.
To produce the images of
Sea Change, I stand in the water holding
light sensitive paper in the break of a wave and allow sand to form a
pattern on the paper as it exposes in the sunlight. This process entwines
the material aspect of the medium with the ocean and shows the trace of
water. As a result, each piece becomes a unique document of the movement
of matter within an individual ocean wave.
Images in the
Sentient series are printed as C-prints, 30x40 inches. Images from Sea Change are unique palladium photograms, 11x14 inches.
—LensCulture
