Over thirty years ago, American design pioneer April Grieman began a digital photography project, first shooting with a 35mm Nikon and then a Polaroid SX-70, capturing glimpses of tree trunks, plant and leaf forms from her moving car. She was attracted to the tension between control and lack of control that the technique encouraged as she began to intuitively compile a personal record of mediated nature.

From Greiman's statement for a 2006 exhibition of this project at the Pasadena Museum of California Art:

"I now use digital cameras, not just as a source of imagery but as a gateway to another dynamic process within the DNA of the computer. Natural energy is transformed into images via the camera lens, those images are then transformed into pixels—into a parallel landscape of transformative energy. Grass becomes fur, solids become transparent, light becomes volume, an instant becomes an object of extended study. Material objects de-materialize into semi-transparent blurs in which foreground and background lose their former identity.

In contrast, immaterial qualities of pure light and color take on unexpected substance and become "objects" in their own right—streaks and washes of color develop an almost painterly presence equal to the now-translucent solid forms, creating a signle—almost biologic—texture. This equivalence is reinforced by the relatively low resolution of the original captures, in which a common fabric of individual pixels subsumes all.

Each stage in the process—the original image captures, their processing in software, and their final rendition in the complex act of printing is an opportunity for discover, in which the dance between the physical and digital languages, the weave of nature and technology, is ever alive."

This exhibition catalog for Greiman's 2006 exhibition includes texts by Marcos Novak and Michael Dobry as well as an introduction by Wesley Jessup.

Published by Made in Space, 2006

Softcover, 52 pages, full color, 12 x 8 inches

ISBN: 978-1-42-431448-5