Artist's Statement

Amanda Marchand

Approx 16x22" each, cut and reassembled (panels of 4)

These images are lumen prints (photograms made with black & white photo papers) from a larger ongoing series, "Lumen Notebook.” This work employs three field guides, birds, ferns and wildflowers. I mark/expose the photographic paper, making one mark per quadrant or half, with an edge of the respective Field Guide book. I use the scanner to "fix" each image. Each photograph references an endangered or disappearing species (bird, fern, wildflower). I have been making this work in nature, at different residencies, and my family's Canadian cabin, where the birds and ferns and wildflowers abound.

My photo-based work grapples with what is raw and immutable in the human psyche, always with deep affection for the natural world. The photographic medium, uniquely light and time- based, is the conceptual framework for the emotive, poetic work I make about our mortal planet. My practice engages photography experimentally as a tool for epiphany, the passage of time, a way to connect more deeply. This work is a personal meditation – as each paper shifts color, slowly or quickly, in the variegated light of the sun.