The Sun. It’s an essential part of our everyday lives and of our modern image-making technologies that it often goes unnoticed–or becomes an unexamined cliché.
To coincide with The Sun Placed in the Abyss exhibition, we challenged photographers to respond to several creative challenges.
We asked photographers to tag their photos on Instagram in response to three challenges: reimagine the classic sunset/sunrise photo, capture something that reflects “Into the Light,” and capture something that reflects “Phenomenon.”
Like the artists whose works are featured in The Sun Placed in the Abyss, this selection of photographs submitted for CMA’s Photo Hunt Challenge, experiment with picturing our closest star and with the conventions of lens-based images, especially on platforms like Instagram. I was particularly drawn to photographs that imagined new ways of capturing the warmth of sunlight or the spectacular colors of a sunset. Like all great art, these images help us to see the world clearly and differently.
Below are my favorites.
CMA Photo Hunts are a digital complement to CMA collections and exhibitions, give participants an opportunity to flex their creativity, be inspired by works or themes in Columbus Museum of Art exhibitions or collections, and respond to creative challenges leveraging the power of social media and the smart phone.
– Drew Sawyer is CMA’s William J. and Sarah Ross Soter Associate Curator of Photography
