Canada, 2000s
In his large format, exquisitely printed and beautifully framed black and white photographs, Michael Flomen reveals otherworldly landscapes that seem to chronicle a visit to the moon or journey through the Milky Way. Transfixed, standing in front of one of these large and luminous images, one becomes lost in an infinite universe. There are horizons and hollows in a land one could only imagine. White is black and black is white. But these are real images of fireflies, made with a large 8 x 10 inch camera, and brought to completion in the artist's darkroom. Fireflies light up Flomen's work to an exalting effect. He freezes the movement and the form of a firefly on photographic paper with alacrity, and creates a seductive fantasia of the heavenly firmament, with web-like traceries of pale fire left on the face of the deep. With a debt to the histories of 19th-century photography and science and to contemporary considerations like abstraction, formalism, modernism and surrealism, Michael Flomen nonetheless transcends these genres with his unique vision and technique. "Insight," edition two of only four printed, signed, dated and stamped on verso. Print is 48" x 60; dimensions below are as framed.