Michael Flomen

Self-taught photographer Michael Flomen uses a camera-less technique: his darkroom is the outside world at night. In the footsteps of early photographic pioneers such as William Henry Fox Talbot, who invented the art of photogenic drawing by placing light-sensitive drawing paper outdoors, Flomen, too, allows nature and light to draw for themselves. His process takes place during the night, when he ventures into the darkness toting glass-plate negatives and light-sensitive sheets of black-and-white photographic paper. Placing the negatives in direct contact with the elements, such as ponds, streams, moonlight, firefly light, snowflakes, shadows, and snowfields, Flomen registers the activity of the light and captures the unseen secrets of natural phenomena.