In Moving Light: Lunation 1011, a video-based installation, Erika Blumenfeld documents the waxing and waning of moonlight over a 30-day period, from new moon to new moon.  Recorded through an altered telescope and self-built recording devices, Blumenfeld documented the varying intensities of light radiating from the moon onto handheld photographic film. The resulting images portray not only the changing quantity of moonlight in its nightly phase, but also the artist’s own hand which, in holding each piece of film over two-minute long exposures, moved slightly with her own heartbeat and body’s subtle sway.  The exposures, taken over the 30-day period, were subsequently animated in sequence to produce a moving account of the lunar cycle.

Blumenfeld, a 2008 Guggenheim fellow, is an internationally exhibiting artist who has developed a process whereby natural light is explored as both the medium and the subject of her work.  Foregoing the use of a traditional camera, she directly exposes light sensitive photographic papers, films, and digital media to the ever-changing sunlight and moonlight.

Blumenfeld’s installations have been exhibited widely in the US and Europe and her work has been featured in Art in America, ARTnews, Arte Contemporary, and Camera Arts magazines, and is included in The Polaroid Book published by Taschen. She appears at Fusebox courtesy of the Robert C Solomon foundation and broxiARTS.

Artist website: http://erikablumenfeld.com