On August 16th I was able to get up to the Marshall Gallery at Bergamont Station, in Santa Monica, to hear Alex Turner talk about his current exhibition Blind Forest which closes today. Heidi Volpe (Director of Photography, Patagonia) hosted the discussion whoch also included Kaya & Blank, video artists who also have a video installation up at Marshall. This is Alex’s second solo exhibition at Marshall, having previously exhibited his Blind River portfolio there in 2023.

Alex Turner (born 1984 in Chicago) is currently a Los Angeles based photographer who received his MFA from the University of Arizona in 2020. I met him in January of 2020 at the Center for Creative Photography’s Legacy of LIGHT Symposium and have followed his career since then.

With Blind Forest, Alex used a hunting scope with a built in infrared camera to capture thermal images of the forest around him. Most every photograph in this was a montage of 150 small image files stitched together digitally to create one larger image file. Those image files are sent to his printer who uses a special digital enlarger that projects a negative image of the file on to Silver Gelatin paper that is then processed in a traditional manner. When he explained the process I had to admit to him that I had never heard of it before. Alex explained how he had been dissatisfied with his early prints on digital paper so he found this other alternative. The prints are beautiful, his decision was correct. With a Google search I found several different companies who provide this service including this one that stood out to me. The Blind Forest images are impressive, and I especially like how the thermal imaging captured artifacts in the trees that Alex could not see with his naked eye; like the carvings in a tree which had apparently healed but the scarred area gave off different heat signatures.

I loved some of Alex’s Bling River photographs when I discovered his work, but I also remember wondering where he would be able to go from there, he has definitely answered that question. I love our medium of photography and how inclusive it can be to so many different lens-based artists. I encourage you to also follow Alex Turner’s career. I have linked several outstanding articles below the gallery of images in this post.

Marshall Gallery is located in Bergamont Station at 2525 Michigan Avenure, #A6, Santa Monica, California and is open from 12pm to 7pm Tuesday - Saturday. It is a great space and Bergamont Station is my favorite gallery community in Southern California, I can always find an interesting exhibition there.

Alex Turner’s Exhibition Statement:

BLIND FOREST My work navigates the intersections of ecology, technology, and human experience, and Blind Forest embodies this approach through an extended study of trees as both ecological keystones and mirrors of human intent. Set across the diverse landscapes of California, the project uses thermal imaging—a tool of surveillance, fire detection, and tree health assessment—to reveal what lies beyond the visible: the conservation, transmission, and dispersion of heat through living systems. Created in collaboration with ecologists, natural historians, and cultural anthropologists, Blind Forest reflects a cross-disciplinary inquiry into how natural systems absorb, reflect, and archive cultural and natural histories. Using a thermal hunting scope mounted on a panoramic tripod head, I construct largescale images from hundreds of exposures, mapping thermodynamic activity in precise detail. In doing so, I treat heat not just as data, but as narrative—a record of vitality, decay, stress, and transition. Trees are long-living witnesses to environmental and human histories, and they carry evidence of shifting climates, displaced communities, and evolving systems of power in their bark, roots, and canopies,. From junipers and pinyon pines valued by Indigenous communities, to redwoods logged for empire and citrus groves that once symbolized prosperity, the species featured in Blind Forest trace overlapping tensions—extraction and preservation, survival and erasure, change and continuity. Blind Forest questions what it means to see—and what is made visible or concealed through the tools we use to understand the world. Thermal imaging extends human perception but also implicates us in systems of control. By turning this apparatus toward the forest, I aim to collapse the distance between scientific observation and poetic witnessing, rendering the unseen visible and inviting viewers to reconsider their relationship to place, memory, and environmental urgency. Ultimately, Blind Forest asks how we document and understand the slow, often invisible forces that shape our surroundings. It positions trees not as passive scenery, but as active participants—living archives that conserve, transmit, and disperse meaning across generations. In a moment of ecological precarity, Blind Forest prompts reflection on the fragile systems we inherit, inhabit, and either sustain or destroy.