Photosynthesis

Photosynthesis explores the reciprocal relationship between sunlight, land, and the people whose hands have long tended it. Presented during the autumn harvest, the exhibition marks a moment of culmination and reflection, a time to consider the conditions that make growth possible, as well as the ongoing challenges faced by the farming community. For Harris, the ideas at the center of the exhibition began at home, on the Northwest Arkansas farm her parents steward.

From there, Harris extended her practice into the broader farming community, visiting several farms throughout the region to photograph people, landscapes, and labor that sustain them. Through these encounters, her process became collaborative: an opportunity to listen, learn, and build relationships with farmers while highlighting both the challenges they face and the resilience with which they continue their work. The resulting photographs reflect not only the physical realities of agricultural labor, but the human stories and relationships embedded within it.

Light, and the act of exposure, runs throughout the exhibition as both subject and material. Sun exposure is fundamental to agriculture, yet it also carries risk: crops face drought and water scarcity, while human bodies bear the effects of prolonged exposure to the sun. Photography itself is rooted in exposure to light, creating another point of connection between the human body, the land, and the photographic image.

Harris extends this relationship through her use of cyanotype, a photographic process in which sunlight directly transforms a light-sensitive surface. The resulting blue images make visible the very element that is at the heart of the exhibition: the sun as a force that sustains, alters, and reveals.

Through Harris’s photographic processes, Photosynthesis asks us to look more closely at the systems that sustain us, and at the people whose hands have long tended them.