Traces of Time: Photographic Explorations of the Natural World

Press Release

Four photographers utilize scientific research, conduct experimental studies, or embark on expeditions to capture the passage of time through changing landscapes, organic life cycles, or celestial activity in Traces of Time: Photographic Explorations of the Natural World. Curated by Gallery Manager Emily Johnsen, this exhibition is on view at the University Galleries from January 25 through March 24, 2016. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on January 31, February 21, and February 28 from noon to 4 p.m. Admission is free. An opening reception for the exhibition will be held on Sunday, January 31 from 2 to 4 p.m.

About the artwork:

Prompted by his insatiable curiosity and the desire to measure the world around him, Caleb Charland conducts numerous scientific experiments that are best captured by the photographic process. When he discovered that bacteria growing on the surface of film left markings of its presence, he decided to use film with solid fields of color as his Petri dishes. The bacterial growth patterns would eat through the gelatin emulsion of the film and transfer color particles as it spread, leaving a biograph, a trace of life, an index of existence. Once the bacterial growth had depleted its resources, the life cycle was considered complete and Charland would scan the final design depicting individual life-scapes, resulting in his “BioGraphs” series.

Sharon Harper creates multiple-exposure photographs as part of her “Moon Studies and Star Scratches” series, in which the camera maps the relationship between the movement of Earth and the photographer. While the camera might be seen as the pervasive presence of technology, which often disrupts our experience of the natural world, here the camera creates possibilities for reinterpreting contemporary experience as it mediates and records, generating images that cannot be seen without it. These images are an attempt to record a realm we can hardly fathom, but within a framework of time we can readily understand, bringing the human scale into relationship with the cosmic.

Christina Seely’s expedition based work focuses on the act of bearing witness in the far reaches of the planet. Embedded in her photographs and videos is the dialectic between surface documentation of representative media and the complex reality that lies below the surface — how the image of a beautiful arctic landscape often obscures the darker more complicated truth of global climate change. The works on view here fromher “Markers of Time” series reflect on the delicacy of our relationship to the planet’s greater natural systems. Tying the viewer as individual to the global, this work generates an essential dialogue in a climate of growing uncertainty about our future relationship to the planet.

For her series “The Oldest Living Things in the World,” Rachel Sussman consulted biologists, scoured scientific journals, and set out on fieldwork expeditions to photograph continuously living organisms on all seven continents. Inspired by the concept of deep time, a framework in which to consider timescales too long for our shallow, physical experience, and too big for our brains to process meaningfully, Sussman sought to create a time capsule, constructed across disciplines, to put into perspective the human lifespan. While she explored and recorded the world much like a scientist would, the series is at its heart a conceptual art project that stresses the importance of environmental conservation.

About the artists:

Caleb Charland was born in Bangor, Maine and raised in rural Maine. He holds a B.F.A. in photography from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design (2004), and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2010). His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, notably in exhibitions at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, Wisconsin (2015); Sasha Wolf Gallery, New York (2014); the Portland Museum of Art, Maine (2013); ClampArt, New York (2012), deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts (2012), and Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (2007). Residencies include the Imagine Science Film Festival, New York (2011), and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine (2009). Additionally, he was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant for 2016. His work is included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Portland Art Museum, Oregon; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania. He currently lives and works in Brewer, Maine.

Sharon Harper was born and raised in Stamford, Connecticut. She received a B.A. in Literary Studies from Middlebury College, Vermont (1988) and an M.F.A. in photography and related media from the School of Visual Arts, New York (1997). Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is in the permanent collections at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Texas; The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and the Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, Missouri, among others. She has held residency fellowships at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, New York; The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire; Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California; and the Leighton Artists’ Colony at the Banff Centre, Canada. She was also a 2013 recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography. She currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and works as Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University.

Christina Seely was born and raised in Berkeley, California. She holds a B.A. from Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota (1998), and an M.F.A. in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence (2003). Her photographic practice stretches into the fields of science, design and architecture. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and is featured in many public and private collections including The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and the Yale University Collection, New Haven, Connecticut. She has been an Artist-in-Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts (2011), a Fellow at The MacDowell Colony (2009), a participant in the Arctic Circle Program, International Territory of Svalbard (2010); and a recipient of a year long Public Arts Commission from the city of San Francisco (2009). She received a 2014 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, and she was selected as a 2016 Artist-in-Residence for Light Work in Syracuse, New York. Her monograph Lux was co-published in 2015 by The Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago) and Radius Books (Santa Fe). She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Studio Art Department at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. 

Rachel Sussman was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. She earned a B.F.A. in photography from the School of the Visual Arts, New York (1998), and worked on an M.F.A. at Bard College and a PhD at Central Saint Martins (on indefinite hold.) She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally including a traveling solo show premiering at Pioneer Works, Red Hook, New York (2014); the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (2015); the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL (2011); and two upcoming exhibitions at MASS MoCA in Spring 2016. She is the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography (2014); a LACMA Lab Art + Tech grant (2014); a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Photography (2013); multiple residencies at The MacDowell Colony, and she was selected as an Artist-in-Residence at the SETI Institute for 2016. She spoke at the TED Global Conference in 2010, and her book, The Oldest Living Things in the World, is a New York Times Bestseller. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

The exhibition is one of two on view concurrently in the University Galleries. The Court Gallery features Tai Hwa Goh: Ebb and Flow. Incorporating traditional printmaking techniques with hand-waxing, New Jersey-based artist Tai Hwa Goh creates a site-specific installation that resembles landscapes and biological forms.

This exhibition is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. The William Paterson University Galleries are wheelchair-accessible.  Large-print handouts are available. For accessible parking or other additional information, please call the Galleries at William Paterson University at 973-720-2654.