I see photography as more than a camera shooting pictures onto film or digital recording. The idea of the camera, of an apparatus which stands between the artist and the world, is more complex and full of possibility.

In searching for a way to reduce the distance between the audience and the work, to make the act of viewing more immediate and direct, I looked for different ways of recording images including photocopying, light boxes, and darkroom procedures. Photography as defined by Moholy-Nagy specifies a limitless and unpredictable world where technique constantly opens new possibilities of image making. The photogram, a process which both he and Man Ray are unforgettable for, is the point of departure for the process I call luminography.

My obsession with the behavior of light and shadow inspired my approach with different methods of mark-making both in and out of the darkroom, using a variety of constructs and light sources to insinuate space, form and feeling. The luminograph is constructed in a color darkroom to create a unique, camera-less, negative-less, computer-less image. Using the entire cone of light to create a territory, a three dimensional interruption of the lightrays and the manipulation of time allow me to define the intensely luminous images included here.

Today luminography is one element of my practice; a medium with which to articulate the narratives created to better understand a life, our world, and the meaning of emotion throughout time and space.

LORENZA PANERO

LORENZA PANERO