Alternative Photography — Light-Speed Time

Jay Lee's alternative photography practice encompasses chemigrams, cyanotypes, anthotypes, watergrams, and photograms — each writing with light in a different temporal register. Training at Penumbra Foundation (NYC), Alternative Processes workshops in Tuscany (2025), and Darkroom Fiasco (Berlin, 2024) built fluency across these historic techniques. Beeswax is layered onto photographic surfaces, creating tactile membranes that blur the boundary between photograph and painting. 'A Mountain with Wings' — a series of chemigrams with encaustic and malachite pigment — was exhibited at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2025). The 'Attempt to Empty My Mind' photogram series, featuring cast glass sculptures as photographic subjects, was a centerpiece of MNEMOSIS at KOIK Contemporary (2026). Arctic landscape photographs from the Svalbard residency (2025) used cyano-lumen, anthotype, and watergram techniques to capture glacial light. Earlier work in Leipzig (2023) and Laos (2023) documented travels through analog film and alternative processes.