Lynn Davis

The photographs of Lynn Davis contemplate the sublime. Her minimalist vision meditates on the aesthetic and symbolic power of the natural and manmade world, distilling her environment into pure formal terms. Through this approach, Davis’ photographs dematerialize the world into its most basic elemental forms: water, dirt, stone, light, and air, presenting even the most recognizable and represented sites on earth, including the ancient Egyptian pyramids and the largest religious monument in the world at Angkor Wat, with authoritative originality. 

Water and ice have been two central sites of Davis’ exploration. Her longstanding engagement with icebergs began in the 1980s, when she made her first voyage to Ilulissat, a small town bordering a glacier in Greenland, and continued over two decades and six expeditions. Her pared-down compositions convey only the most fundamental elements: an iceberg perched between sky and water invites contemplation of our world’s constant flow between solid, liquid, and gaseous states. The series Evening/Northumberland Straight (1993) approaches the level of pure abstraction in its expansive portrayals of water on the horizon. Through Davis’ vision, the complexity, vitality, and purity of what seem to be simple materials become portals for reflection. The rapid melting of the Arctic’s icebergs, and their transformation from solid, unique aesthetic forms into the ocean, adds further meaning to the cycles that her work explores.