Shadows of Light

Opening Reception
Friday, April 4, 5 – 7 pm
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Shadows of Light explores the boundaries of photography through experimental processes that transcend conventional image-making. This exhibition looks at the medium of photography, pushing its traditional role of representation into abstraction and experimentation. The artists Odartey Aryee, Maya U Schueller Elmes, Freya Harding, Khim Mata Hipol, and Jimena Diaz Jirash each share work that offers the viewer an understanding of the photographic process by omitting the camera as the primary tool.

Central to the exhibition are photograms, cyanotypes, and chemograms – three alternative methods that engage with the essence of photography: light and chemical reactions. Harding and Hipol’s photograms, produced without a camera, involve placing objects directly onto light-sensitive paper to create abstract compositions that are as much about absence as presence. Schueller Elmes’s cyanotypes, with their characteristic blue hues, are created by exposing a light-sensitive surface to ultraviolet light, often using natural objects such as plants or leaves as stencils. This technique highlights the precision of light and the organic textures of the natural world, offering a poetic meditation on photography’s connection to time and nature. In contrast, Aryee and Jirash’s chemograms blend the practices of photography and painting, as chemicals are manually applied to photographic paper through controlled or uncontrolled methods, resulting in unpredictable and vibrant forms.

Through these techniques, Shadows of Light offers an intimate look at the interplay between light, chemistry, and materiality. In this exhibition, photography is no longer bound by its mechanical origins. Instead, by working with light and shadow, the artists push photography’s relationship to reality, form, process, and image-making.