photo by Carolina Monroy
STATEMENT
Light is both the subject and the substance of my work. With simple materials and shifting methods, I explore and photograph light’s multiple properties as it bends and moves through space. Rather than documenting objects, I’m interested in capturing visual encounters with light’s unique qualities all around us.
I begin with a simple intention: To make light visible. I place interruptions in light’s trajectory in attempts to expose moments of light’s interactions that are unable to be seen directly with our own eyes. The reflection, interference, refraction and distortion that the camera lens captures is the result of strategically placed reflective surfaces redirecting light's trajectories.
The resulting images present a new vocabulary of unfamiliar forms, shapes, and spaces that exist between abstraction and reality. Together, they offer a visual challenge, questioning if what we see is real, and a perceptual challenge to what we know as true.
My upcoming solo show, The Ambiguity of Light, will be exhibited at CORE GALLERY, Seattle, July 2nd-July 24th, 2026.
No manipulation or Al has been used in the making of this work.
BIO
Nancy Edelstein is a photo-based fine art photographer and installation artist who engages with natural light. As a result of testing and observation, she constructs abstracted images through the lens of refraction and reflection. Her latest efforts have resulted in a suite of unique images entitled “The Ambiguity of Light,” and is the product of her formal, non-objective approach. This upcoming work is a natural development from her previous solo exhibition presented in 2023 at Method Gallery, titled “The Shape of Light,” in which the primary material was light itself.
Nancy completed her MFA from MICA, Maryland Institute of Art, in 2021, and holds an earlier BFA from the University of Michigan. In addition, she was awarded a full residency fellowship to MASS MoCA in 2021 and was invited back for a second alumni residency in 2022, which culminated in her open studio installation there entitled “Pray for Sun.”
Prior to her graduate program, Nancy designed and produced unique limited edition legacy books through her business Biographica. Her own personal book, “Friday Night DInners”, is in the permanent artbook collection at Swarthmore College, while an earlier photographic piece of hers is held in the Bailey Boushay Collection in Seattle.
Nancy’s photographic work has been exhibited at the Davis Norton Gallery in Hudson, New York; the Griffin Museum of Photography in Winchester, MA. The Month of Photography Los Angeles, Photo Book Exhibition, Lucie Foundation, Venice Arts, April, 2018 and more.
THE AMBIGUITY OF LIGHT will be exhibited at CORE Gallery in Seattle, July of 2026.
CONTACT
Email edelstein.nancy@gmail.com
Instagram nancyjo.art
Website: https://nancyedelstein.com