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.

Additional information about Alex Turner :

Musee Magazine 2025 article on Blind Forest - This is an outstanding interview!

Lenscratch 2025 article on Blind Forest

Lenscratch 2020 article on Blind River

I have been able to watch a number of great live web events recently about photography and I want to quickly mention them in a post. With all the material out there today, I feel like I was lucky to have found these. The first two I discovered because I follow Dr. Rebecca Senf at the Center for Creative Photography and the last one was an Instagram alert about a live broadcast starting because I follow Joel Meyerowitz.

The first webcast was four weeks ago and was the Center for Creative Photography’s “Ask a Curator” event where Rebecca Senf (Becky) answered questions about being a curator for an hour. I thought this was outstanding and I encourage photographers, or anyone interested in fine art photography, to follow the “Ask a Curator” link and listen to her talk. I have really focused on getting to know curators and other photography professionals lately, just to deepen my understanding of the medium and the direction it is going. I have met Becky several times, have heard her lecture, and read her writings. She shares content in a way that every person who receives the information will gain a better level of understanding of the topic. I love listening to Becky talking about photography, her knowledge of, and passion for, the medium always comes through.

The next live webcast I saw was also promoted on Rebecca Senf’s Instagram. This event was the Photographic Arts Council - Los Angeles’s A Picture a Minute where well-known photographers, collectors, and curators each selected a single photograph and spoke to why the image was important to them, ideally for just one minute. You can see with my screen shot above the list of participants was impressive.

With the picture in a minute webcast, speakers were moving fast and my note taking was not perfect, but here is what I got down – I researched as much as I could to prevent errors, my apologies if I missed anything.

The concept for the event came from a project Agnes Varda had done for French television where she did 170 episodes called “un minute for un image”. Agnes wanted to how a single photo could impact people. Agnes felt that viewing photographs gave her space and time to think and wanted to share that with others.

Here are a selection of the presenters and their chosen photographs:

Alia Malley shared the photograph “Earth rise over the Moon” taken on 12/24/68 by Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders and spoke about how incredible that moment was for all of mankind and how important the image was capturing it. She also mentioned how intriguing it is to think the camera only captured 1/250th of a second in time but how powerful that fraction of time was.

Andrea Liss highlighted Carry Mae Weems photograph “Moody Blue Girl”

Arpad Kovacs’s photograph was David O. Alekhuogie’s 2015 image “Bandana Hearts”.

PAC LA’s Director, Bayley Mizelle, talked about Alvin Baltrip’s 1975-80 series “The Piers” documenting the gay cruising spots in New York City before the Aids epidemic.

Cesar Rueda showcased a photograph by Magnum’s Yael Martinez.

Paula Ely shared Vik Muniz’s “Ecstasy of St. Theresa after Benini” 2015

Clare Kunny and her husband Colin Westerbeck spoke about a photograph in their personal collection which is a dual portrait of Colin by Joel Meyerowitz. They spoke about how the image was photographed and how special it is to them (There is more about this image below including Joel’s comments about it which I heard in a separate web cast).

Dan Solomon spoke about Deborah Turbeville’s American Vogue editorial in the 1970’s and mentioned there was a ‘sense of decay, Photos are about memories”.

Gallerist Douglas Marshall paid tribute to Lawrence McFarland, who passed this year by talking about the power of his photograph “Wheatfields Nebraska/Kansas border 1976”.

Elena Dorfman’s choice was an 1872 Eadweard Muybridge print.

LACMA’s Eve Schillo chose Yan Wang Preston’s 2017 image Egongyan Park.

Hiroshi Watanabe didn’t understand the “one-minute” aspect of the event, but he gave an interesting talk about a Robert Frank print he had owned once, “New Orleans Trolley 1955”. Hiroshi paid $8,000 for the print in 1992 and when he decided to sell it a few years later, because it had started to fade slightly, it sold at auction for $36,800.

Jeanne M. Connell showed a 1948 print of Solarized Calla Lillies by Carlotta Corpron. I was not familiar with Corpron, who a teacher at Denton College in Texas, but this image was beautiful.

Jo Ann Callis shared Daido Moriyama’s famous 1971 photograph “Stray Dog”.

Rebecca Senf chose a photograph by Ansel Adams which was printed early in his career, a 1927 print of Mount Galen Clark. I found her selection interesting because I have seen exhibitions of Adams’s photographs where multiple prints of the same image, from different stages in Adams’s career, are hung together to show the evolution of his technique. I also found it interesting to see which Adams image Becky chose since she has expert knowledge of most all his work.

Robert Berman selected a Julian Wasser image that I know and like of Duchamp playing chess with a nude model. I did a blog post earlier this year when Wasser passed away. I have seen video of Wasser talking about his life and photography before, he definitely lived life to the fullest and made some great images. I also liked the fact this particular image was made in Pasadena, California in 1963, because I was born there that year.

Former gallerist Stephen White shared a Bill Brandt nude.

Virginia Heckert, who is the curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum talked about Shigemi Uyeda’s 1925 photograph “Reflections on the Oil Ditch” from their collection.

Michael Hawley, Chairperson of the Getty Photographs Council, chose a Graciela Iturbide photograph, titled “Angelita” 1979. Listening to Hawley, he obviously has great insight into the medium and he said a couple good things worth sharing: “The art of photography are pictures that offer more questions than answers” and he reminded people to get to know their artists who are still here.

Long time Los Angeles gallerist Paul Kopeikin shared a vernacular photograph of a cowboy and a girl from his collection and spoke to how anyone can collect photographs which I thought this picture was an awesome share. Paul’s words reminded me of some of Bill Jay’s lessons on the value of a photograph back when I was studying at Arizona State.

I am thankful the Photographic Arts Council - Los Angeles put this event on, it had a lot of value.

**Darius Himes - Christie’s**

Interviewing Joel Meyerowitz along with Alejandro Cartagena

The final live webcast I saw was Darius Himes and Alejandro Cartagena interviewing Joel Meyerowitz about his recent venture into the NFT market. I follow Joel on Instagram and got notification that the live video was starting, and at that time I was able to watch it. Alejandro is an artist in his own right, but he is collaborating with Joel, helping his go through his massive archive to find images from the past. Darius is the International Head of Photographs for Christie's. The conversation between these three was interesting enough but then Alejandro brought up the fact he had participated in the Photographic Arts Council - Los Angeles’s A Picture a Minute and mentioned one of Joel’s photographs had been featured in the event. The photograph was a dual portrait of Colin Westerbeck, one image in the morning and the second image in the afternoon in his apartment, I believe in Chicago. In the pre-digital age, it was a slightly complex image to compose so the frame edges lined up correctly. During the PAC LA event Colin and his wife, Clare Kunny, spoke about the print which still hangs in their house and how important it is to them because of their relationship with Joel. When Alejandro brought it up in this webcast Joel then talked about his photographic process for the image. It was fascinating hearing the perspectives from the three people involved in making the image. Colin is the former Curator of Photographs at the Art Institute of Chicago and an educator. Clare Kunny specializes in education programs within the museum environment. Colin and Clare have lived in Los Angeles for some time now. Joel Meyerowitz is another photography icon that is always worth listening to. He is one of the best image makers of all time and has such incredible energy.

There is so much content online now and it’s hard to navigate through it all, but when you do you often find some amazing content. Hopefully you will find the time to explore some of the links I have shared here.