Artist's Statement

Not only does time move too fast, but it seems that each year, each season, each moment that passes
is shorter than the one before. In our world, we live moment to moment, rarely seeing the cumulative effect
of our actions. We speed through life too quickly to see the beauty of time.

One of the joys of photography is that it helps us see the cumulative effects of time more clearly.
We can record a moment, let time pass, and then go back to see how time has asserted its control:
often both physically changing the subject of the photograph and
emotionally changing our perspective as the photographer.

What I find even more fascinating is discovering what happens when I record a span of time in a single frame.
Everything is amplified. I see the quiet or the chaos. The overload or the emphasis. The flow or the stillness.
I can even see the static quality of static.

I am captivated by long exposures because I get to see an abstraction of time:
the light, movement, and color. With long exposures, I have the privilege of recording,
and then observing, a visual manifestation of what time has created.
In some ways, I am not the artist, the artist is time.

I am often humbled by the process of doing my work.
It can take a tremendous amount of planning, patience, and perseverance,
and yet, I am constantly forced to just. let. go.
To let chance, luck, and divine intervention drive the process and ultimately my work.

.::. Amanda Dahlgren .::.