Lynn Stern ‘Echoes of Light’ at Obscura Gallery

Lynn Stern, Dialogues in Light #8, 1985 (Unveilings Study), gelatin silver print 8x10 inches, edition of 7
 

By KATIE CERCONE July18, 2025

Adjacent the digital age progressing in hurried leaps and bounds, artist Lynn Stern’s 47-year practice based in traditional wet room photography continues to position her as a favored luminary of the fine arts. Since she began working with still life, translucent cloth, large-format cameras and film in the 80’s, Stern’s work continues to solicit steady fascination, unchanged amidst the shifting currents of contemporary art and life. Call her an ‘abstract’ photographer or not, critics and fans of Lynn’s work unanimously agree, photography is her tool, not her medium. Likewise, her subject isn’t the object she paints, but rather, the light - the voluptuous luminosity hugging form.

Why echoes of light? Why Now? Quantum physics tells us solid matter is an illusion, that everything is merely vibration. Holy War tells us the light is specified and worthy of bloodshed. Abolitionism that our lyrical light/shadow binary maintains a metaphor of racial supremacy.  If traditional photography manipulates light to tell a story, digital photography fishes for figments of the imagination twice removed from reality. The internet itself, given its fundamental infrastructure of fiber optic cables - faithfully transmitting data as pulses of light - is arguably a vibrant and varied faucet of cerebral photosynthesis. In the outdated language of progress and individual genius, is there really anything left to unveil?

Lynn Stern, Force Field #21-131. 2021, 34 x 43.5 inches, Archival Inkjet Pigment Print, edition of 6 plus 2 APS N.F.S
 

Coinciding with the artist’s inaugural exhibition “Lynn Stern: Echoes of Light” at the Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Obscura Gallery July 19th is a book signing of Stern’s rare 1988 publication Unveilings. Titled after the 1985 series of the same name, the work presented in book format is representative of the first instance in which Stern used a scrim of translucent white fabric backlit by indirect natural light in the studio, capturing flowers against a white backdrop. Enduring a theme as it may be, these images are not made about Anemone flowers, but rather, the interplay between petal and scrim, the folds of the latter being subject to Stern’s probing manipulations.  In addition to purchasing a signed copy of the book, which displays all 40 silver gelatin prints of the Unveilings series, exhibition guests are invited to view a curated edition of prints on display at Obscura Gallery through August 9th.

Maybe the fact that Stern’s work is so convention-defying and boundary-pushing in itself stems from the fact that the artist grew up surrounded by an extensive collection of Abstract Expressionist paintings and sculptures. As the daughter of the late David M. Solinger (art collector and former Whitney Museum president), we can assume Stern received her cultural art education up close and personal with some of the mid-20th century’s greatest hits.

Lynn Stern, Mystic Light #13-03, 2013-2019, 33 x 32 inches, Archival Inkjet Pigment Print, edition of 6 plus 2 APS N.F.S
 

Her telling influences include painters of the 19th-century Luminist movement, photographers Edward Weston and late industry legend Paul Caponigro, who auspiciously penned the forward to Lynn’s book. In the opening pages of his essay cataloging the birth of Stern’s lifelong experiential study of light, Caponigro writes that as an artist Stern was “Inclined to communion through her work,” and, having “yielded to her subjects” was “allowed profound access to them.” A contemporary of Ansel Adams, Caponigro, who also worked in florals, still life and landscape, shared a formative relationship with Lynn. In a world where consent is continually renegotiated and the muse talks back, Stern’s work passes the test of time with shadowy eloquence and humble plentitude.

Lynn Stern, Unveilings #82, 1985, gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches, edition of 7 plus 2 APs
 

According to critic Cori Hutchinson, an encounter with Stern’s imagery is akin to “returning to a summer home where ghosts have played all winter.” While standard art speak calls photography a medium of representation, for Stern, it is chiefly a medium of light. Calling her “A Photographer with a Painter’s Psyche,” critic Michael Muroff writes about the influence of Ad Reinhardt’s Art-as-Art philosophy in Stern’s work, speaking to the way she illuminates the subtle essence of what is nearly imperceptible to the naked eye. Stern has been known to often cite Reinhardt’s dictum: “What is not there is more important than what is there.”

Lynn Stern, Passage #02-30, 2002-2011, pigment print 46 x 28.5 inches, edition of 6 plus 2 artis't proofs
 

With works on view from several bodies of work, including PASSAGE (2002 - 2004), DIALOGUES IN LIGHT (1985), FORCE FIELD (2019), MYSTIC LIGHT (2013 – 2019), QUICKENING (2013 – 2019) and UNVEILINGS (1985), the show spans a near forty-year period curated around the quiet revelations emanating from Stern’s long-time study of the visibly feminine, sensual and subtle qualities of light. According to gallery director Jennifer Schlesinger, the curation in the show centralized on her series’ that use subtle reflections and luminosity in the highlights as the subject, lending the feeling of graphite drawings. Recognizing Stern’s standout ability to capture a quality of light that is as immaterial as it is potent, Schlesinger maintains that Stern’s is an aesthetic “rarely seen in the realm of photography.”

Like a slender needle in the haystack of photographic abstraction, the tonal, ethereal-spatial quality of Lynn’s work seemingly swings through dimensions. "Stern’s work exists at the threshold between recognition and abstraction, challenging the viewer’s assumptions about representation,” writes Noah Becker, comparing her style to certain paintings by Gerhard Richter. Suggesting that her work is like listening through a wall or viewing a scene from behind a veil, Becker’s insights suggest that Stern is neither a traditional colorist nor unruly stepchild of classic impressionism, but rather, a rogue-like angel operative crashing the liminal space between representation and abstraction. In a 2020 interview, Lynn spoke to Becker about her prescient studio photography: “Instinctively, I was always interested in a certain quality of light.” Concluding, “You can use light any way you want,” Stern highlighted how many of the early innovators of abstract photography of the 20th century (Man Ray and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy to name two) were in fact painters.

Lynn Stern, Passage #04-18, 2004-2011, pigment print 46 x 32 inches, edition of 6 plus 2 artist's proofs

 

Lynn Stern, Unveilings #59, 1985, gelatin silver print 8 x 10 inches, edition of 7 plus 2 APs
 

After a long-storied career centering her study of light, fed, presumably, by the shadows (the genesis of her “Dispossession” series depicting skulls), Stern continues her lo-fi dance with figure and ground. With works filled with energy and immateriality, Lynn Stern: Echoes of Light, surely engulfs the viewer in its grace.

Lynn Stern's work is represented by Obscura Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  Her work can be seen at AIPAD The Photography Show in New York City each spring. Stern has also exhibited throughout the United States and Europe, and her photographs are included in numerous public and private collections, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Cornell University (Ithaca); the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Portland Art Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum (London); the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); and the Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT), among others. The Lynn Stern archive is located at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ. Follow the artist on Instagram @lynnsternphotographs

Lynn Stern: Echoes of Light runs June 27th-August 9th, 2025

Obscura Gallery 225 Delgado Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Opening Reception & Book Signing July 19th

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Photographer Lynn Stern and the Reverberation of Light” by Noah Becker, Whitehot Magazine, published online June 20, 2020

“Lynn Stern: Transit of Light at Erin Cluley Gallery” by Cori Hutchinson, Whitehot Magazine, published online March 26, 2022

“Lynn Stern: Scrimming the Invisible” by Cori Hutchinson, Whitehot Magazine, published online November 2019

“Lynn Stern: ‘A Photographer with a Painter’s Psyche’” by Michael Muroff, Art 511 Magazine, published online August 20, 2023