Light / Remains

Light / Remains is a roving series of cyanotypes exploring geologic and intergenerational time using light, found pigment, and found forms. A forthcoming book of the same name draws on this series alongside poems and essays.

Each work can be thought of as an x-ray of a place — a momentary reflection of vast, ongoing temporal and spatial relations. They are made in places significant to me: wild landscapes of the Pacific Northwest and Great Basin, towns and cities in Transylvania and Poland, remote wildernesses in Alaska, archipelagos in the Arctic, canyons in the American Southwest.

The primary pigment in the cyanotype process is Prussian Blue. Prussic acid — the same chemical at the core of Zyklon B, the lethal gas used in Nazi death camps — was first drawn from this pigment and named after it. “Zyklon” translates to “cyclone.” In German, prussic acid is Blausäure, “blue acid.” Some walls in the Nazi camps still bear traces of the same arrestingly vivid blue that characterizes cyanotypes.

All four of my grandparents survived death and labor camps during the Holocaust. Both of my grandmothers, Rosalie and Olga, survived Auschwitz. These works are a record of ongoing diaspora, trauma, and healing — tokens of transformation, attempts to shift trauma to love. Each one is a prayer, a trace, an homage, an elegy.

The sun is my primary collaborator on this project. I also work with the varied animacies — pigments, stones, wings, plants, branches — that I collect in the places these images are made. They are barely-stilled transitions. Like light, they feel like they might shift at any moment.