New York-based photographer Megan Bigelow is a space explorer, her vessel is her large format view camera. She constructs a symphony of visuals, and her instruments are mundane sources of light and energy—projectors, television screens, scanners, computers, downloaded images and simple bulbs. In the series Spectroscopy, Bigelow’s fascination with metaphysics—her philosophical mind—gives way to a more visceral and open-ended exploration of how light and energy move and how they move us, spiritually and psychologically.

Bigelow highlights the relationship between artwork, creator and viewer, and the triangulation that results in multiple interpretations and experiences. Indeed, an image of the sun in various stages of surface explosion feels alternately literal and mysterious, strangely accessible for a phenomenon so far from our physical reaches. The relationship between what is actually “out there” and what is presented to us through the various mediating devices at the artist’s disposal brings to mind a version of Plato’s cave where the distinction between real and unreal yields infinite layers of experience.

This post was contributed by photographer Keren Moscovitch.