Created for The Cleveland Eclipse Exhibit at Pinwheel Gallery. The show was composed of photograms by Steven Mastroianni and lumens by me.

In this series, I explore themes of time and change through lumens created to commemorate the 2024 total solar eclipse in Cleveland, OH. Using images of historic trees that were alive during the state’s previous total solar eclipse in 1806, I encourage viewers to reflect on the question: What will remain when the next one occurs in 2444?

The lumens highlight Moses Cleaveland trees—majestic beings identified as being at least 150 years old at the time of Cleveland’s sesquicentennial in 1946. These trees are named after the surveyor who gave the city its name in 1796, though the spelling was later adjusted to remove the extra letter “a” from Cleveland. I printed digital negatives from photographs I took of these trees, along with vintage timepieces featuring celestial elements. I then contact-printed the negatives, sometimes adding botanical items, to make lumens on expired and fogged darkroom paper.

The first phase of the project involved displaying stable reproductions of scanned lumens. The second phase took place on Eclipse Day. Leading up to and immediately following totality, I created additional lumens, which were scanned and then directly installed in the gallery alongside the first-phase prints. Exposed to continuous ambient light, these unfixed lumens changed throughout the remainder of the exhibition, mirroring the way the world was rendered unrecognizable during totality.