Albert Einstein once said, “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that gives rise to true art and true science.” For Dr. Elliot McGuckennature’s sublime riddles form the basis of his explorations of landscape and light.
McGucken traverses some of North America’s most beautiful and striking terrain, including Death Valley, where he captured a beautiful wildflower earlier this year. He enjoys all kinds of natural phenomena, from the vicissitudes of the Rocky Mountains to brown bears fishing in Alaska’s Katmai National Park and Preserve, to the haunting flood-carved walls of Antelope Canyon. He also happens to be a physicist whose research focuses on an artificial retinal prosthesis that could help restore vision to the blind.
Although photography and physics may seem worlds apart at first glance, they intersect in many ways, especially through the use of advanced lenses that manipulate light to create images. In this way, McGucken channels a boundless fascination with perception and seeing, in which scientific research drives his photography as much as the aesthetic and technical qualities of the medium. He is also very into Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, which is an ongoing series called Spacetime Light Cone Sculptures dx4/dt=ic comes in.
McGucken delves specifically into the study of the fourth dimension, based on Einstein’s 1922 book The meaning of relativity, in which the renowned scientist illustrated a “cone of light” that “represented the deep, physical relationship between space, time and the speed of light,” says McGucken. This almost hourglass-like shape, with two cones meeting at the ends, forms the base of Spacetime Light Cone Sculptures dx4/dt=ic.
McGucken describes the works as “sculptures on nature’s exalted easel,” using contemporary technology to illuminate theories of existence and the cosmos. He sends a drone into the sky over dramatic and remote landscapes in the Southwest to capture long exposures of cone-shaped spirals of light. Over the years, he has visited the Trona Pinnacles in the California Desert Conservation Area and the Mobius Arch rock formation in the Alabama Hills, among others.
See more on the artist Instagram and buy prints on his website. You can also enjoy Rueben Wu’s glowing light paintings.
