Before crossing into the Zone, I stopped to take a 10-second exposure. Visualizing the light and connecting to the scene around me, I had no idea what it looked like but could already feel the final frame.
In earlier series, Industria (2001) and Assembly Point (2002), I discovered my fascination with the night and the world lit by sodium vapour and mercury halide. I started to develop a process. I became aware of myself and the light as it reflected on the water particles suspended in the air around me. When visualizing the light on an atomic level as it enters the lens and travels through the aperture recording on the film or sensor, I nurtured a relationship with the light. When further acknowledging the beauty in front of me, time dissolved, and I entered a state of heightened awareness or zone state. This series affirmed this process and facilitated the realization of my vision as an artist. Furthermore, it introduced cinematic qualities and a sense of journey and movement communicated in a series of pictures as I moved through the scene from point A to B.Â

This is image three in a series of seven that I created in 2003. The Zone was inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky's film Stalker and the novel Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. It was captured using a Hasselblad 500CM, 80mm Zeiss Planar lens on Fuji Provia 100F transparency film.
