Tracing Melt

2026-Ongoing

Lumen Prints

This work is made by placing ice blocks and piles of sea salt onto photographic paper and exposing it to UV light to create lumen prints. As these unfixed experimental photographs are chemically unstable over time, continuing to shift under the light, I scan them and create archival pigment prints to capture the photograph before it disappears. 

Tracing Melt is informed by my time spent in the High Arctic. When I returned home I began making blocks of ice in my freezer and placing it on photographic paper with piles of sea salt, recreating memories of the pack ice.

Exposing this to UV light, the ice melts under its warmth and moves across the paper, stirring with the sea salt. As I watched the ice melt, I recognized forms that mimicked drifting pack ice, glacial moraines, and the movement of the glaciers themselves. As the ice melts and moves it creates traces, outlines, and a photographic record of the melt itself.

Tracing Melt #10

Lumen Print, scanned and printed as archival pigment

30”x40”