Science Fiction #130, 2002, gelatin silver print from carbon emulsion negative, 40x32”, 
Courtesy the artist

 CHARLES LINDSAY  

The Science Fiction project is an exploration of fictitious worlds, combining my interest in the aesthetics of space exploration, microscopic discovery and abstract imagery. I am interested in the idea that so much of our expanding scientific knowledge is based on imagery from beyond our normal scope of vision.  

Each negative is the result of my manipulation as well as numerous generations of the fluid’s history, where minute evaporation trails render an archeology of time. The process itself is highly experimental and random. As I progress this seems to be an attempt to conjure imagery which suggests ‘nature’ in it’s most core form. These are photographs from that ‘place’ where I imagine that the development of complex systems begins, exhibiting the imperative to movement, evolution and complexity on all scales.  

This work also brings full circle and personalizes the visual and philosophical influences of my previous careers first in exploration geology and later as a photojournalist concerned with the interfaces between culture and nature. In geology it was particularly the study of crystallography for aesthetic reasons and the sense of time that stratigraphy reveals which fascinated me. During my years living with a remote hunting tribe in Indonesia it was their root animistic understanding of our place within nature that agreed with my sensibilities, in contrast to modern industrial philosophy, which seems to have put humans outside of nature, in competition and seemingly at odds with it. I am interested in the challenge and implications of understanding our relative scale within the universe.  

The silver gelatin prints in the Science Fiction project are made from negatives utilizing a carbon emulsion on a transparent polyester base. The textures reflect the induced influence of evaporation, static electric charge and microscopic particle behavior.

Charles Lindsay was born in San Francisco and spent eight years covering environmental issues as a photojournalist in Asia before moving to NYC where he currently lives and works. His work, which is concerned with nature in a more abstract sense, has been shown at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Museum for Wildlife Art at Jackson Hole , the Albany Museum of Art in Georgia, and the Yellowstone Museum of Art in Montana . Science Fiction was first exhibited at the Eyre/Moore Gallery in Seattle in 2001 and at Scott White Contemporary Art in California in 2002. A partial list of books to his credit include Upstream, Fly Fishing in the American West, Aperture 2000; Turtle Islands: Balinese Ritual and the Green Turtle, Takarajima 1994; and Mentawai Shaman: Keeper of the Rain Forest, Aperture, 1992. Lindsay’s photographs have also appeared in print in the New York Times Magazine, Blind Spot, Aperture, Men’s Journal, Orion, and GEO, and he has lectured at the American Museum of Natural History, the Summit Photo Workshop, and Mountain Film in Telluride.