All photos © Sharon Harper/Courtesy of Galerie Roepke, Cologne and Rick Wester Fine Art, New York City. Above: Moon Studies and Star Scratches, No. 2. November 8, 2003. Greensboro, North Carolina.

NASA says that its twin probes are scheduled to arrive on the moon New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. The data they collect may solve some of the mystery that remains about the lunar surface. The mission’s chief scientist, Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told the AP: ”We actually know more about Mars … than we do about our own moon.”

For her series Moon Studies and Star Scratches,  Sharon Harper photographed the moon over a period of days, weeks and months on a single sheet of film.  Harper says the camera is “a metaphor for the pervasive presence of technology within the landscape, a presence that often interrupts our experience of the natural world. The camera here, however, creates possibilities for re-interpreting contemporary experience as it mediates and records, generating images that cannot be seen without it. In the images from the series…the moon links our understanding of time in terms of a monthly calendar with a celestial realm where time is measured in light years.” Moon Studies and Star Scratches is featured in Daylight Magazine’s current issue, Cosmos. Harper’s newer series, Sun/Moon (Trying to See through a Telescope), is currently on view at Galerie Roepke in Cologne through January 21st.

Wishing you all new perspectives for 2012.

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All photos © Elijah Gowin/courtesy Robert Mann Gallery. Above: “Into the Sun 12,” 2009

Elijah Gowin has transgressed one of the most basic rules of photography in his latest series, “Into the Sun.” Shooting into the sun is a way of courting blindness, but it’s also a daring way to confront the source of the force and power of the center of our solar system. His exhibit “Into the Sun” is on display through October 22 at the Robert Mann Gallery in New York City.

Gowin, who received a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, is currently associate professor in the department of art and art history at University of Missouri-Kansas City.  Critic Lyle Rexer has written, “Elijah Gowin is the prophet of this longing, the diviner of such dreams. His work confronts the impenetrability of the world and the challenge of representing it.”

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All Photos  © Carolyn Marks Blackwood; above: “Cloud Series #64″

Carolyn Marks Blackwood’s  images are on view at the Alan Klotz Gallery in New York  in a show called “The Wind Blows Through My Heart.” The poetic title seems appropriate for her deceptively simple photos. Blackwood photographs moments when elements — ice on the Hudson River, clouds in the late afternoon – are being transformed by wind, sun, or tides.  As the gallery’s notes for the show explain, her shards of ice look like forbidding landscapes, and her clouds are “the meteorological equivalents of brushstrokes.” (more…)

© Catherine Nelson/Galerie Paris-Beijing.

As a contemporary ode to Nature, the image series “Creation” by Catherine Nelson contains sublime and dreamlike elements, staged as serenely revolving spheres. Photographs of nature are blended with digital techniques to give shape to these transcendental landscapes. Every image is meticulously composed with thousands of precisely assembled details, capturing the essence and peaceful strength of various imaginary places. Nelson’s photographs are on view at Galerie Paris-Beijing in Paris until June 2, 2011.

© Ryan Heffernan.

Storm clouds swirl around the Capitol building on a stormy spring afternoon in Washington, DC. Ryan Heffernan is one of the PDN’s 30 Emerging Photographers for 2011. To see more of his work visit http://www.ryanheffernan.com/.