Experiments >>>Artist Statement
Photography...Writing with Light
Photography began as a scientific endeavor. The technology to focus light and form an image with a camera obscura and lens has existed since the beginning of the millennia. However, the technology to fix that image to a surface, to make it permanent, is a relatively new one. In the early 1800’s a scientific race began, culminating in the first fixed photographic image by Joseph Niepce in 1827. Through Niepce’s experiments with different chemical solutions, “writing with light” was invented. Later this idea was built upon by Louis Daguerre and William Henry Fox Talbot, both inventing their own chemical processes with which to photograph. Today, computer programs and digital cameras add a new layer of science and technology to photography, but the craft of literally writing with light is slowly becoming obsolete. This body of work focuses on the chemical science of photography.
I use the landscape as a familiar setting for the chemical reactions. I print the images in the darkroom, painting on the developer and fixer to chemically alter the image. The result is a composition based on the traditional and fundamental chemical reactions of the photographic process –writing with light.