Looking At Light

On view | July 2 – September 15, 2025

Reception | TBA

Looking At Light 

Eileen Novack

July 2 – September 15, 2025

In this series, I turn the lens not toward objects illuminated by light, but toward light as the subject itself. Photography, by nature, is an act of capturing light—but in this work, light is not simply the means by which the image is made; it is what is seen, felt, and studied.

I explore the properties of light—its texture, direction, diffusion, color, and transience—as visual phenomena worthy of independent observation. Through careful control of exposure, reflection, refraction, and shadow, each image investigates how light shapes perception, evokes emotion, and interacts with surfaces and atmosphere.

By removing or minimizing traditional subjects, the images ask the viewer to notice what is usually invisible: the presence of light as a physical and emotional force. Some frames isolate beams slicing through a void, others capture the shimmer of indirect glows, or the spectral complexity of natural and artificial sources.

This work is not about what light reveals but about light itself—its language, its form, and its fleeting nature. It invites you to pause and look not at the world illuminated, but at the illumination.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Eileen started in photography shooting film back when it was the only option, many years ago. She had a very extensive darkroom in her parents home and spent many hours there honing her understanding of the craft. She was a budding product/advertising photographer, whose first client paid her with vegetables from their garden.

Eileen did eventually find additional clients who did pay in non-vegetable currency. She also participated in a group show at a New York City gallery on 57th St. With work involving Kodachrome slide manipulation.

When a fire destroyed most of her work in the late 80’s she decided to pursue other career paths and spent the next twenty or so years in the software world, and let her interest in photography fade. Retiring in 2012 she found a renewed interest in photography and started learning about this new digital imaging world and where she might fit in and to also have some fun.

She has a keen interest in history and especially photographic history. With the period of the first half of the Twentieth Century being the most exciting. Photography was changing rapidly and moving into the mainstream art and commercial realms in a very dynamic way. The great advertising and fashion photographers were developing on the East Coast and the move away from Pictorialism had taken hold on the West Coast with group f.64.

To purchase works on view please contact info@patchoguearts.org