Goodbye 2015: A Year in Review

 I wanted to take a pause this New Year to think about 2015. It’s easy to let a year go by and not want to reflect on the goings on of that year—immediately putting resolutions on the wall and wishing for the next year to constantly be better that the previous. 

Aline Smithson made a post on Lenscratch of her and her team’s Favorite Things of 2015. So, I wanted to make a contribution to this by making my own list! See blow.

Favorite Light Leaked Post of 2015

Tall Tales: aninvestigative look into the surreal

Tall Tales was an online and physical exhibition on Light Leaked and at Canopy Collective in Cleveland, OH. It was an amazing experience to put together with Caitie Moore and Erika Dee. All the work! All the conversations over Skype! I loved that it involved creating a selection of images from the photography community and that it provided an opportunity to curate a focused selection of a lot of photographers at once. I was really proud of how the exhibition that came together.


Honorable Mention:

How to: Make a UV Exposure Unit for Alternative Process

This year Light Leaked started creating tutorial posts for processes that I felt this community would find valuable. For this post, the power couple, Ashley Whitt and Ross Faircloth, shared the process of how they created an inexpensive (and huge!) UV exposure unit for alternative processes in their at-home studio. And it was glorious.

Favorite Featured Light Leaked Artist of 2015

Abbey Hepner

I met Abbey earlier this year and I immediately connected with her and her work on nuclear energy. Rooted in science, research, and inquiry, Abbey’s work brings the viewer into a world in which we assume a lot, but actually know very little. And we’re all better for it. In November the curator and independent writer, Laura Addison, conducted an insightful interview with Abbey about her work. If you missed it, make sure to check it out!

Favorite Photography Book of 2015

Many amazing photography books were published this year. Here’s a few I LOVED:

Aline Smithson, Self & Others, Magenta Foundation

You guys. This book. What words can I even use to describe the genius of Aline and the Magenta Foundation? First, let’s talk design. I got the special edition of this book and I think it is the way to go if you haven’t bought your copy yet. The print and color choices are so, Aline: off-beat, seductive, smart, fun. Something about it feels like an f-you to the simple traditional style of monographs, and I love it. The layout of the images and pages are playful and experimental—very in line with Aline’s work. This also creates a rhythmic flow through the pages, and before you know it, you’re at the end and need to start again. It also really tells the story of Aline’s growth as an artist over the years: her movement from one idea to the next and really, the playful nature that entails. It’s the journey of a powerful and intimate artist telling stories, and we are all lucky enough to have a front row seat.

Honorable Mention:

Maude Schuyler Clay, Mississippi History, Steidl

Oh my goodness, Maude Schuyler Clay is a Southern goddess. Mississippi History is absolutely one of the most beautiful photography books I have seen in person. The printing is divine, the design, scale and sequencing is heaven. Every detail is so considered that it makes this lifetime of work sing out from the page, begging re-viewing. The content is expansive, spanning thirty years of color work that comes together to describe a personal, photographic, Mississippi history.

I can foresee Mississippi History being talked about with the likes of Stephen Shore and Robert Frank in the future. I am not even worrying about overselling it, because this is the truth.

Honorable Mention 2:

Lori Vrba, The Moth Wing Diaries, Daylight Books

To start, the cover is a smooth, velvety white hardcover with a tipped in photograph and letter pressed text. The images are expertly printed on thick weight paper and are amazing replications of the hand-toned photographs I’ve seen in person. Overall, the book is simple yet elegant. The work causes the viewer to reflect on family, love, relationships, memory, life… It’s a stunning visual poem.

Daylight published some beautiful books this year, and I am really looking forward to their future as a publishing house.

Favorite Non-Photographic Book of 2015

Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

"You do not need anybody’s permission to live a creative life."

I know some people may be skeptical of a book written by Elizabeth Gilbert--if Eat, Pray, Love wasn't your thing. But any fan of Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland will love this book. It's a deep investigation into the mysteries of the creative process and living a creative life.

This book was like getting advice from a trusted friend, and caused me to reflect on my artist practice, expectations of myself, and how to manifest ideas into art. In short, it was the most inspirational book I read this year.

Honorable Mention:

Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town by: Jon Krakauer

Note: there are graphic descriptions of rape in this book

Missoula chronicles the rape allegations from several college-aged women at the University of Missoula from 2008-2012, as well as the overall state of sexual assault in America. First, Krakauer is a nuanced nonfiction writer and investigative journalist. Second, this book raises powerful and essential questions surrounding how our society handles rape cases. I would describe this as the most insightful and heart-wrenching book I read this year.

Honorable Mention 2:

The Night Circus by: Erin Morgenstern

Okay. So this book came out in 2011. But I read it for the first time (and the 2nd time and the 3rd time) this year. The Night Circus is a finely drawn dark narrative that intertwines the lives of 3 protagonists as they navigate the creation and possible destruction of a traveling circus, Le Cirque des Rêves, that only opens at night. This was simply the most fun read/listen* of the year for me.


*A quick shout out to Audible (not sponsored), which I got this year, and was definitely the BEST money I spent. I work a lot, and used to only read books before I went to bed. Now, I can listen to amazing productions of books on my phone when I'm working, driving, cleaning, and yes, about to go to bed. Because of this, I have read (listened?) to more books this year than the last several years combined. Check it out, especially if you are an auditory learner, like me.

Inspirational Photographer of 2015

Micah Cash

A source of inspiration for me this year came from the magic that is Micah Cash. He is an articulate, smart, well-rounded artist that works in photography and painting. Not to mention a caring and inspiring friend. His work, Dangerous Waters, takes any viewers understanding of the TVA to new levels.

Here’s a couple things Mr. Cash taught me this year:

1. The power of the conceptual landscape 
2. The power of intricately researched work 
3. The power of confidence 
4. The power of public speaking 

Favorite Photography Event of 2015

Light Leaked Meet-up at SPE

This was definitely one of the most fun events of the year, for me. It was so great to see a lot of Light Leaked artists and readers come together in one place, interchange ideas, and meet one another. I wish we could have events like this more often because this was seriously inspiring. Look out for an invite to the next meet-up at SPE in Las Vegas!

Favorite Album of 2015

Blue Neighborhood by Troye Sivan

Blue Neighborhood is a pop/synth affair that is the first studio album by this Australian singer/songwriter. I describe him as a male Lorde to anyone who asks. Although this album is not perfect, it is beautifully emotional. It’s sexy! It’s fun! It’s been on repeat.

Note: amazing noodle dancing in above video

First listen to: Youth

Honorable Mention:

Cicada Rhythm by Cicada Rhythm 

Cicada Rhythm is an Athens, GA based folk duo that are as haunting as they are beautiful. The album is very Townes van Zandt meets Regina Spektor. Drive with the windows down to “Dirty Hound.”

First listen to: Do Not Destroy

Favorite Professional Moment of 2015

Photo by: Tamara Reynolds 

Questions of Origin Solo Exhibition and Panel at Slow Exposures

Slow Exposures is a rising star in the world of photography festivals. Based in rural Georgia, and organized by Chris Curry. These “Four Slow Days” are full of photography exhibitions, pop up shows, artist/juror talks, and drinking wine on porches. Last year also marked the beginning of an artist in residency program, which is currently open for submissions.


Questions of Origin was selected by Aline Smithson and Alexa Dilworth as the solo show award winning at the juried exhibition the previous year. It was a great solo exhibition and panel discussion with Karen Lacey and Celeste Headlee that was broadcast on GPB Radio at Slow Exposures.

Seeing the work together and talking about it detail with a panel and an audience, brought a sense of perspective and resolution to that work that I didn’t have before.

Favorite Personal Moment of 2015

This year I got engaged! My now fiancé, Ethan Fogus, brought me on a kayaking trip in the Tennessee mountains and proposed with his grandmother’s ring from the 1920s. It was beautiful, sweet, and fun. For those who don’t know Ethan, he is a Bruce-Springsteen-loving-hilarious-songwriter-musician-poet-educator-allaroundgreatperson. I’m really looking forward to our life together!

All that being said, here’s some resolutions I have for 2016:

1. Create more artist run contributions (articles, tutorials, exhibitions, interviews) on Light Leaked. Have one in mind? Email to: lightleaked@gmail.com
2. Have more conversations in person (I will accept Skype in this resolution) 
3. Take time to sit quietly 
4. Spend more time outside, away from my computer 
5. Don’t check my email first thing in the morning 
6. Always have a running 6 month plan
7. Make more work
8. Share my work with others 
9. Practice generosity, kindness, and empowerment with everyone 
10. Practice confidence and empowerment with myself 

Thank you to the community of Light Leaked and the photo community at large for making this a great 2015! Your passion, inspiration and encouragement are everything.

Abbey Hepner

Abbey Hepner investigates the human relationship with landscape and technology. She considers issues related to population growth, man-made disasters, as well as the complex and often contradictory roles surrounding technological progress. She addresses psychological motivations existing in the gray area between political extremes and morally complex subjects. Her work illuminates the increasingly common use of health as a currency. Hepner holds bachelor’s degrees in Art and Psychology from the University of Utah and is currently in her final year of an MFA program in photography at the University of New Mexico.

Interview conducted by: Laura Addison A curator at the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and previously at the New Mexico Museum of Art. She is also an independent writer on contemporary art and photography.

Laura Addison: Through several of her recent projects, Abbey Hepner has interrogated the nuclear industry, whether photographing decommissioned plants in Germany or making environmental portraits of an anime-like “nuclear mascot” in Japan in the months following the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant disaster. She subsequently journeyed to various sites in the United States that send their nuclear waste to southern New Mexico's Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) and printed those photographs as uranotypes, a 19th-century uranium-salt-based technology that tests viewers’ comfort zones while viewing landscape imagery that carries the threat of contamination. In her final series, Control Room, Hepner gained access to the Vogtle Nuclear Power Plant and the surrounding rural Georgia community to examine the nuclear industry’s “renaissance” in spite of stories of disaster and contamination.

It’s no accident that you chose to pursue your graduate studies in New Mexico: birthplace of the atomic bomb, home of the first atomic bomb detonation at Trinity Site, and final resting place for the nuclear industry’s waste at WIPP. Can you talk about your decision to journey to some of the significant sites of nuclear history, among them New Mexico and Japan? What have you learned about place and landscape from these encounters?

Abbey Hepner: I created my first project on the topic of nuclear energy in Germany at the height of the decommissioning of nuclear power plants across the country. I was interested in what the landscape becomes after the towers fall and the buildings become inoperable. The industrial landscape is suddenly rendered impotent, but the land often remains dangerous for decades. Creating this work in Germany opened my eyes to many problems with nuclear energy that I wasn’t aware of before. It made me conscious of how misleading many U.S. news sources are, especially in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant meltdown. That shift in awareness inspired me to investigate various facets of the nuclear energy industry.

In 2013, I volunteered in the Japanese disaster zone that was left from the 2011 tsunami and nuclear meltdown. Eisenhower’s Atoms For Peace Program in the 1950’s helped build Japan’s nuclear energy industry and so I was really interested in how my own culture as an American had influenced Japan. Nuclear propaganda in the U.S., with cartoons such as A is for Atom or Astro Boy, always seemed strange to me. Just as bizarre, I discovered that each of Japan’s nuclear plants had their own cute mascot characters. This led me to create my own fictional nuclear mascot that I photographed in different situations that referenced current nuclear concerns in Japan. In an act of public art intervention, I had an image of the character screened on a digital billboard in Shibuya Crossing, the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. In this photograph the character points out at the crowd of onlookers and then back at himself, raising a question about the role of media and propaganda in manmade disasters.

After coming back from Japan, I moved to New Mexico for graduate school. I left a place fresh with wounds from the nuclear industry and moved to a place filled with scars from it. I had gained a heightened sense of discomfort while in Japan. Many people are concerned about radiation but it’s extremely taboo to talk about it. I never knew if the land around me, or the food I ate was contaminated. I constantly discounted my own fears because I was another pair of hands to help and ultimately I could return home to a place I believed was safe. Newly immersed in the dry desert of the southwest, I started to question this illusion of safety. I realized that I had spent my entire life unknowingly living near nuclear sites that were filled with radioactive waste.

I love the work of artists like David Maisel, who takes beautiful aerial photographs of toxic landscapes. They are hauntingly alluring but they always suggested to me a certain otherness. In their grandiose scale and the nature in which they are made, they remained at a safe distance. What I feared was not the toxicity that appeared visibly contained within the borders of a photograph, but the invisible toxicity that existed in my backyard. The mundane and easily dismissible sites that have become a part of our modern life. I attempted to capture this anxiety in the series Transuranic. This is a series of 13 Uranotypes, an archaic photographic process that uses the radioactive chemical uranium instead of silver, from all the sites in the western U.S. that ship radioactive waste to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in Carlsbad, New Mexico. WIPP is the nation’s only underground repository for radioactive waste. I traveled to each of the sites, documenting the locations and tracing the routes that radioactive waste is transported across our country on. In Transuranic I examine the citizen’s view of radioactive waste sites and their existence in the banality of everyday life.

Through these projects I have learned about the importance of going and bearing witness. I am increasingly aware of the connections between history and place and how often we repeat our mistakes. In February of 2014, an accident at WIPP forced it to shut down. Our nation has no solutions for the containment of radioactive waste and yet we are now in the nuclear renaissance, beginning to construct more nuclear plants. Two new nuclear energy reactors are currently being built at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, the first to be built in over 30 years. Interested in these issues, I spent time in Georgia photographing the residents, plant workers and inside Plant Vogtle. I was genuinely interested in the community and the influx of thousands of temporary workers constructing the plant.

LA: What do you see as the connective tissue among your various series? There seems to be more at play than nuclear legacy.

AH: I am interested in the human relationship with landscape and technology. I examine our demands on technology and the result when it fails us. In an ever-increasing technological world we rely less on nature and less on each other. Our health is often the currency in these transactions. My own cognitive dissonance plays a big role in my work, I love technology and I demand far too much of it. I am also fascinated by nuclear history and many of my closest friends are nuclear engineers. Ultimately, I aim to provoke the viewer. Through humor, absurdity and confrontation, I encourage an examination of subject matters that are often taboo.

LA: How has your background in psychology informed your artwork, if at all?

AH: My examinations come from concern about health but I am also interested in why people believe the things they do. In addition to provoking my viewer, I am also interested in rescripting mediums and experiences. “Imagery Rescripting” is used in cognitive behavioral therapy and uses imagined images to intervene on traumatic memories. I often choose my medium in an act of rescripting. For example, using a billboard to critique media and propaganda in Nuclear Mascot or using the radioactive element uranium to create prints in Transuranic. By rescripting, I suggest that it is not the material itself that is the cause of evil but the hand that controls it and I attempt to alter its pathology. This seems like a natural evolution, as I worked in a cognitive psychology research lab for years studying Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

LA: Your recent experiments with bioluminescence seem to be a departure from your photographic series. Can you talk about this series and the ways in which you use technology as process and subject matter?

AH: My primary artistic mediums are electronic art and photography. They are both tools in which I investigate the human relationship with the landscape and technology but they also speak to my fascination with light and electricity. Nuclear Illuminations is a series of biological street lamps. One street lamp is made with bioluminescent algae and two path lights are made with bioluminescent bacteria. The lamps have servos in them and they are connected to microcontrollers that are activated when nuclear-related keywords appear on Google and Twitter. The bioluminescent organisms illuminate when the microcontrollers trigger the servos and the liquid is agitated. Viewers see the biolights illuminate when the online conversations are active and they can also participate in the conversation on twitter and see the result in real-time.

After the Fukushima accident, scientists had discovered green microalgae in the waters around the plant. That strain of algae has the ability to accumulate radioactive nuclides including iodine, strontium and cesium, from water and soil in the heavily contaminated area in Fukushima. Algae may be one of nature’s ways of remediating the damage that has been caused by the nuclear disaster. After working with toxic chemicals in photography I wanted to create a project using organisms that remediate the environment. Once again I am thinking about methods of rescripting in terms of process. Technology plays a role in using virtual conversations to trigger the biological light. I am suggesting that perhaps we heal through conversation and through demanding transparency when it comes to our health.