Seth Harris [b. 1966] U.S.A.

My photography explores the interplay of light, shape, and time—discovering beauty within the abstract details of everyday experience. The decision to work almost exclusively during the full Moon infuses the images with notions of finitude and recurrence in the creative process. In tracing the Moon’s reflection across fifteen years, I strive to reframe the familiar as extraordinary and remind us that the act of seeing is itself a form of reverence.

On the right night, the Moon’s ethereal glow transforms familiar spaces into what feels like a photographic negative of the sun.  The full Moon serves as both subject and collaborator— its distinctive glow reveals new dimensions of the world, casting familiar forms in unexpected reflective light, with each lunar event marking an ephemeral alignment that cannot be replicated.  The images serve as quiet meditations on time, perception, and the thresholds between the ordinary and the sublime.

 

As an alternative to producing traditional lunar photography, the abstract images I create are intentional. Rather than simply photographing the Moon, I use it as a medium—a brush made of reflected sunlight—to paint with light. My goal is for the image itself to captivate first, with the viewer’s realization that the Moon was the source of that light serving as a quiet meditation on rhythm and impermanence; a reminder of the finite number of full moons one may witness in a lifetime, each lunar event marking an ephemeral alignment that cannot be replicated.