The Observer’s Arc

This image was created using a long-exposure technique to explore themes of duality, perception, and time--looking both forward and backward as we navigate our connection to the cosmos. Photographed with a 180mm macro lens, I began by using my camera’s self-timer to trigger a flash to pop off in the background, creating my first silhouette and establishing a foundation for the light painting.

Using multiple handheld torches, I painted myself selectively: one torch with a shapable snoot to illuminate the Mini Diana camera, along with a dried leaf in the lower right corner; another torch to create the glowing rim light around my head, forming a phantom-like, reversed silhouette of myself. Lastly, I brought a beam of light above my head, creating Paramount lighting on my now forward-facing body. A graduated pink glass filter added a balancing gradient across the top of the frame, while the ambient red light in my studio enhanced the surreal atmosphere.

A watch on my arm references the relativity of time, calling attention to the fleeting and interconnected moments that define our existence. The glowing arch, inspired by Hildegard of Bingen’s visionary paintings, evokes a divine portal to inner reflection, while the Mini Diana camera symbolizes the act of observing and being observed. The dried leaf represents the beauty of decay and renewal, a signature of my core ethos, permaculture. Like my dual silhouettes—one gazing back, the other stepping forward—this image questions whether progress is truly advancement or simply a repetition of history seen from a new vantage point.

"...the ideas expressed in it could be very instructive and useful, especially for those adorners of contemporary civilization who naively consider it immeasurably higher than former civilizations in respect of the perfecting of human reason."—George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff