Photolucida: Critical Mass

Artist:                                 Ken Lyon

Date:                                  June 2026

Submission Title:           “suspensions, tensions and illusions”

Artists Statement:

PURPOSE

The images in this submission were culled from a recent ten-year period, the period that correspond with my initial use of digital capture. There is a tension within them, a tension based on obvious visual tells - wires, cables, etc - or in some a more abstract, under-the-surface, subtleties - illusions that can be unsettling or uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in the ‘not quite sure what I’m seeing’ perspective. Although these images have not been premeditatedly assembled as a group, they are simply a collection of images that somehow tie together - or juxtapose with each other - and perhaps help to define my photographic vision.

PROCESS

All the images presented are digitally captured using a black and white sensor, then ‘processed’ in Lightroom.    For many years, in the pre-digital era, I worked with huge cameras to be able to create platinum / palladium prints.  This process, and dozens of others, used to be considered ’alternative process’, but of course all analogue photography is now alternative.  My latest interest is in a hybridization of the two – capturing digitally, then outputting digitally enlarged negatives (using piezography), and then reverting to the hand-made beauty of platinum / palladium printing process.

TIMING

I’ve been actively involved with photography for over 50-years, and now, for the first time, I feel an urge and now ready to share my work as a ‘re-emerging’ (RE older) artist! 

- Ken Lyon