Light Portraits is an installation consisting of twenty unique luminograms on black-and-white gelatin silver paper, each created through direct exposure to natural light in different locations around the world. Using lumen printing—one of photography’s earliest light-based processes—I allow light to act directly on photographic paper, including warm- and cool-tone gelatin silver papers, over exposure periods between 10 minutes and 24 hours. The resulting works function as material records of time, atmosphere, and environmental conditions rather than representations of people or places.

I developed the project through a process of long-distance correspondence with individuals in places where I once lived, including California, Mexico, Québec, France, India, and New York. I mailed participants photographic paper along with a simple exposure protocol, and the sheets were later processed in my New York studio. Through this collaborative gesture, Light Portraits extends portraiture beyond the human figure, proposing light itself as the subject and the environment as an active co-author of the image. The prints bear visible traces of their conditions of exposure: light rain, handwritten time notes, and organic textures become embedded in the emulsion, revealing subtle gradients and chromatic shifts. These works foreground what is typically invisible in conventional photography—the surrounding atmosphere, impurities, and temporal flux—making perceptible the material presence of light and duration.

Light Portraits situates my practice within broader dialogues on material photography, expanded portraiture, and environmental perception, emphasizing photography not as representation but as a physical registration of light, time, and place.

In collaboration with:

Cait Molloy (San Francisco, USA)

Teresa Santana (Mendocino, USA)

Fernanda Del Monte (San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico)

Moïse Piuze (Rawdon and Montréal, Canada)

Madi Silvers (Paris, France)

Ari Gan (Delhi, India)