Stephen Strom spent his professional career as an astronomer. Born in 1942 in New York City, he graduated from Harvard College in 1962. In 1964 he received his Masters and Ph.D. in Astronomy from Harvard University. From 1964-68 he held appointments as Lecturer in Astronomy at Harvard and Astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. He then moved to the State University of New York at Stony Brook and served for 4 years as Coordinator of Astronomy and Astrophysics. In 1972 he accepted an appointment at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, AZ, where he served as Chair of the Galactic and Extragalactic program. The following 15 years were spent at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, MA; from 1984-1997 he served as Chairman of the Five College Astronomy Department. In 1998 Strom returned to Tucson as a member of the scientific staff at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory where he carried out research directed at understanding the formation of stars and planetary systems and served as an Associate Director of the Observatory. He retired from NOAO in May, 2007.

Stephen began photographing in 1978. He studied both the history of photography and silver and non-silver photography in studio courses with Keith McElroy, Todd Walker and Harold Jones at the University of Arizona. His work, largely interpretations of landscapes, has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and is held in several permanent collections including the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, the University of Oklahoma Art Museum, the Mead Museum in Amherst, MA, and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. His photography complements poems and essays in three books published by the University of Arizona Press: Secrets from the Center of the World, a collaboration with Muscogee poet Joy Harjo; Sonoita Plain: Views of a Southwestern Grassland, a collaboration with ecologists Jane and Carl Bock; Tseyi (Deep in the Rock): Reflections on Canyon de Chelly co-authored with Navajo poet Laura Tohe; as well in : Otero Mesa: America’s Wildest Grassland, with Gregory McNamee and Stephen Capra, University of New Mexico Press (2008). A monograph comprising 43 images, Earth Forms, was published in 2009 by Dewi Lewis Publishing.

Illusions of Intimacy - Steven Strom - Artist’s Statement

I have spent most of my professional life as an astronomer, searching out patterns encoded in the light from distant stars in the hope of understanding how our sun and solar system came to be. Over a research career spanning four decades, I have spent countless hours perched on remote mountaintops, looking upward mostly, but also contemplating the desert below during those precious moments of quiet and solitude before and after nights spent at the telescope.

During those times, I became drawn to, then seduced by the changing patterns of desert lands sculpted by the glancing light of the rising and setting sun: light that reveals forms molded both by millennial forces and yesterday’s cloudburst into undulations of shapes and colors. In response, I began what has become a 30-year long devotion not only to capturing in images those remarkable patterns and the rich history they encode, but to attempting the nearly impossible: via camera, paper, silver and ink, to evoke and perhaps recreate the powerful emotional responses that desert lands elicit in me. My tools are simple - a 4x5 view camera or 35mm SLR, and long focal length lenses whose power to compress space can create an illusion of intimacy, of comprehension, inviting viewers to look deeply into what light and earth together form.

During the past three decades, most of my work has centered on interpretations of the landscape itself. More recently, freed by digital cameras from the physical and psychological burdens of large view cameras and heavy tripods, I have turned my attention from the macro- to microworlds: choosing to image fragments of the desert and seaside beaches that express in their quiet, understated way the same powerful combination of pattern, history and emotion as the grander landscape.

Thus this combination of landscapes, sandscapes and sandstone. Taken together, they attempt to provide a glimpse into what the late essayist Ellen Meloy described as a “geography of infinite cycles, of stolid pulses of emergence and subsidence, which, in terms geologic and human, is the story of the (earth) itself.” What I hope to re-create is what Meloy called the “calm of water”, the “spill of liquid silences”, and a “quality of light and color that pierces the heart.”.

Karen Strom has spent her professional career as an astronomer. Born in 1941 in Fairfax, OK, she grew up in Henryetta, OK and graduated from Harvard College in 1964. She then worked at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory before moving with her husband, Steve, and her children to the State University of New York at Stony Brook. In 1972 they moved to the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Tucson, AZ where they studied star formation and galactic structure and renewed their interest in non-astronomical photography. In 1983 they moved to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, spending their time there studying star formation. Karen received an honorary Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1986 from Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE) in Puebla, Mexico for her 40 years of research into star formation.

In 1998 the Stroms returned to Tucson where Steve is a member of the scientific staff at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory. Karen decided that this was the appropriate time to retire from the academic life to pursue her new interests in the World Wide Web. She has spent the time since moving to Arizona as the webmaster for the World Wide Web Virtual Library - Index of American Indian Resources Online and for Storytellers: Native American Authors Online, a website for more than 50 Native American authors. She also constructed websites for indigenous artists and local non-profit organizations.

Karen began photographing (again) in 1978. She studied both the history of photography and silver and non-silver photography in studio courses with Todd Walker at the University of Arizona. Her work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and is held in several permanent collections. Recently she evaluated the new tools available and decided that she might finally be able to achieve the images that she had wanted to when she first began to seriously photograph in 1978. The images here are the result of that exploration.

Karen Strom – Artist’s Statement

The world I see is composed of many different layers, scales and moments. When making an image, I explore the relationships between multiple facets of the world, integrating them into a single vision in an attempt to mimic the manner in which the mind forms composite impressions from the array of images that are constantly impinging upon you. While the resulting images often evoke disparate, even conflicting, responses, they ultimately capture a more complete impression of a landscape or object: details are synthesized into broader views; interiors integrated into exterior views. It is the ambiguity of my images, the feelings evoked by differing scales, perspectives and viewpoints, that together work to yield an integrated image of a landscape. It is these visions that I then attempt to translate into a single image, hoping to evoke similar emotional and intellectual responses in the viewer.

The first versions of some of these images were made many years ago in the darkroom, using photolith masks and a pin registration system, restricting me to a single image size. I was also restricted by the difficulty of making the photolith masks to a small sample of available mask geometries. The software now available actually allows me to work in a manner consistent with my original conception of the images. There is infinite flexibility in the construction of the masks, with the ability to adapt them individually to each image. The new papers available for ink jet printers and the archival ink sets for printing grayscale images combine to make me excited about making images again and to try to achieve my original concept..