Lumens

Lumen prints and lumen films, as I call them, are a new take on an old photographic process that dates back to photography's origins. An object, typically a plant, is placed on top of light sensitive material and then both are left out in the sun anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours, a day, or even weeks or months. The sun "develops" the paper or film and the artist may later fix or tone the image if desired. The natural world has always been my muse and the lumen process allows me to combine nature and photography in one perfectly imperfect, ever surprising process. With every image, the life of the plant chemically mixes with the emulsion, creating a work of art that I merely bear witness to. Each plant and paper/film combination produce a unique result that can change further when the print is fixed or toned as a final step. This project is a relatively new one, but I have already amassed nearly 200 hundred images and I am nowhere near done. I am currently growing my own plants in order to create all new images with a much larger variety of plant life.