Infrared Photography by Christopher Light

In this exhibition of his recent work, photographer Christopher Light explores the urban and natural world through infrared digital photographs. The human eye can see only a very small portion of the entire light spectrum. The portion of the spectrum with frequencies just below the lowest visible red light (longer wave lengths) is referred to as “infrared.” Although invisible to the eye, digital cameras are sensitive to infrared light. Photographs taken with infrared light seem at once precise (due to the absence of atmospheric haze) and dreamlike (skies appear dark and natural foliage-tree leaves and grass-appear very light as they reflect the infrared light).

A Kalamazoo native, Christopher Light grew up with a darkroom and the use of his father’s 4 x 5 camera. He earned a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University and worked first as a newspaper reporter-photographer the later as a college professor and free-lance writer for the early microcomputer magazines. In 1995, after moving back to Kalamazoo, Light returned to photography, combining his knowledge of photography with his computer skills, and, as a refresher, took several photography courses at the KIA. Since then he has had more than a dozen one-person shows in several Michigan galleries and produced large-scale digitally printed photographs for public buildings in Kalamazoo and Ann Arbor. This exhibition is his museum debut.