For several years I’ve made a ongoing photo series I’ve come to call Studio Light. I work as much as possible in daylight in my studio, and sometimes while I’m trying to focus on a task I’ll notice something the sun is doing, like causing a piece of crumpled paper to glow as if from the inside or, just before sunset, projecting a wild pattern on the wall through a sheet of acetate. It might be a coiled strip of transparent material I had set aside while I worked on something else which has suddenly disappeared except for a glow around it. Or a mobile artwork laid on tissue for packing has become a ribboned landscape. I first took photographs of these instances as notes for installations I was developing, learning about transparent and translucent materials and how they respond to and reflect light. Somewhere along the way I started keeping my camera and tripod handy to capture these fleeting moments as well as I could, working quickly without rearranging things, letting the camera do its thing, to hold still the constantly changing day. Looking at the photographs at first I can only see how they are not the moments I witnessed — too still, I think, doubting. But as time pulls me away from the initial events, these glowing images move forward, greeting me like old friends with their strange, alien optimism. They contain the fact of being seen. And so I continue.
See also:
PFOAC site