Life and Shadow Exhibition

Gerald Peters Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico

June 26-July 25, 2015

California photographer Robert Buelteman's images are "Energetic Photograms" — made with neither camera nor lens by placing living plants on his easel made of a sheet of metal encased in Plexiglas and applying high-voltage electricity and fiber optic light to render the image. Photograms employ the essential nature of photography: the ability of light-sensitive media to capture an image when exposed, regardless of the source of the exposure, whether it be light energy passed through the aperture of a camera, or, in Buelteman's work, via his hand-delivered high-voltage electricity and fiber optic technique.

This high-tech adaptation of a historical low-tech process requires the artist to improvise, sometimes requiring over 100 sheets of film to create the image envisioned. This exhibition, his first in 8 years due to his having been disabled from Lyme Disease in 2007, presents a range of images going back to his first experiments in 1993. Why involve oneself in such a time-consuming effort in the digital age? Buelteman notes, "With these works I seek to make life itself present, revealing its glory and probing its mystery."

— THE Magazine - July, 2015