Of Heaven and Earth

With the series Of Heaven and Earth I address my place both in cosmic and intimate scales. The photographs are constructed by marking the land in front of my camera in such a way that the path of heavenly bodies interacts with the marks that I have made from the vantage point of the camera. In doing this, I must take very careful measurements based on my camera position and the position of the sun or moon in the coming hours. When the mark on the earth is completed, I open the shutter for a very long exposure. The result of this is a photograph of the moon or sun meeting with or reflecting in an altered landscape. In this way, the heavenly meets with the human, the immense with the intimate and one of the most constant forces in our world meets with a line of rocks or grass that is fleeting in meaning and form. There meaning is only evident from one vantage point and only for one night, and long after the line I have made disappears into the land, indeed long after I am dead, the moon will continue on it's elliptical path. I make these photographs to draw a line between these two modes of understanding the world. —David Shannon-Lier