Beautiful Terror: Pesticides All Around Us?

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However, some audiences — particularly organic growers, environmentalists and scientists working with pesticide issues — immediately understand the references in my imagery and respond enthusiastically. In fact, they provide me with new information, which they say begs for visualizations.

Generally though, the images require more explanation that you would expect. The art audience requires the most explanation. So, no, I don’t feel I’m preaching to the choir. Though the photographs tell a cautionary tale, it is oddly one that is not as widely understood as your readers would think, even with more and more attention given to ‘green’ this and ‘green’ that.

I am obviously pleased by how my visual curiosities have been received and have become useful to people. However, my reason for continuing the project always comes down to this: I am compelled by what I see after applying these fluorescent tracer dyes in darkened rooms, and in the corners of my garden, and on common objects under UV lamps. These objects suddenly become the stunning galaxy of chemical particles they are — that we all are. Then, just as I am reveling in this mystery and awe, I find I am also looking squarely at that which threatens our very existence. Rachel Carson the great has said that both realities must be seen clearly for us to survive.

Q. How do audiences typically react to these images?

Audiences generally react to the images as I react to them as I photograph in the dark and as the farm workers react to them in the training demonstrations: first there is a kind of confusion about what is being seen; then amusement because they often look weird and sometimes creepy; then awe because of the dazzling spectacle of constellations that can be strangely beautiful; and then there is this feeling of being completely sobered when you realize what they are about.

With the lenticular images, viewers dance before the photographs on the wall to see them animate, amused and physically engaged, inspecting them far longer than they would look at an ordinary photograph. This makes sense since detecting motion is our innate visual priority, designed to alert us of danger.

The lenticular medium also incorporates elements that imitate an interesting aspect of the farmer demonstration: a sense of fun used to engage a serious subject. Using this photographic medium, the images are accessible to many audiences, alluring and unsettling while subverting the technology’s familiar use as a novelty item or advertising gimmick. This series has inspired an interest in merging “vernacular” and “fine” art, and exploring new approaches to the art photograph as the medium becomes ever more democratized.

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