Lumen Landscapes

Lumen Landscapes is a series of photograms of the landscape made by the landscape. Using smaller plant materials found in nature I construct large abstract landscape vistas. This dramatic shift in perspective and scale challenges the viewer’s preconceived notion of what defines landscape photography.

At the root of this series is a childlike sense of curiosity and creation. I have a four-year-old son who is absorbing all that life has to offer and his unbridled curiosity is something I truly admire and try to emulate. Curiosity and exploration are carried through at every stage of creating these images, from gathering source materials found in nature while exploring with my son, to assembling them into abstract landscape scenes, to exposing in the sun for hours, and finally to fixing them as the colors continually shift. While I have a previsualized idea of what I want the scene to look like, I never really know what the final print will reveal. This childlike excitement of experiencing something for the first time drives my curiosity to create more images. In the process of reimagining plant materials to create my own unique vision of an abstract landscape scene, I find myself acting as part sculptor, part painter, and part photographer.

Lumen printing is a form of photogram printing where a uniquely beautiful color print can be made from exposing materials in direct contact with black-and-white photographic paper under UV light such as the sun. “Lumen” is understood as the projection of light radiating from one ominous source (i.e., sunlight, or UV light). These original prints are one-of-a-kind, printed-out, silver-gelatin prints. Printed-out simply means the development stage occurs during exposure, and the only subsequent step is fixing the image in a fixer solution, thus keeping materials and process steps to a minimum.