LUX NOCTIS

“Rather than falling, night, to the watchful eye, rises.”

+ A. Roger Ekirch

In the early months of 2016, photographer Reuben Wu began documenting remote geological formations in the American Southwest using an unusual lighting technique: a high-power LED mounted to a remotely controlled UAV, or drone. This setup allows Wu to send lighting out into the landscape, illuminating single rock slopes and ridges with unerring precision. The drone, rather than serve as an extension of the photographer’s eye, becomes instead a part of the landscape being photographed. Dimly illuminated rock forms loom, robots circling them in space like the whirring of a planetary hard drive.

Photographs by Reuben Wu & text by Geoff Manaugh.

In collections:

Aeroglyphs & Other Nocturnes

This catalogue was produced on the occasion of Reuben Wu’s exhibition at photo-eye Gallery, open to the public from August 30 through November 16, 2019

​Simultaneously reminiscent of the slick, neon glow of sci-fi aesthetics and the cryptic symbolic language of ancient petroglyphs, Reuben Wu’s work is clean, yet mysterious. His photography hovers somewhere between the mythic and the surreal, between dream and memory, with an undulating sense of temporality slipping between the ancient past and the imagined future. Light and land are entwined equally at the center of Wu’s practice. By affixing lights to drones and using them to illuminate select parts of the landscapes he photographs, Wu draws precise geometric marks that hover in the air like beacons, harbingers, and signs. His work is concise, yet versatile in concept, offering new ways to approach the human relationship to nature, technology, and the overlay between past, present, and future.

photo-eye Gallery debuted their representation of Wu’s work earlier this year at Photo LA and in a solo exhibition booth at AIPAD – The Photography Show, New York.

In collections: