Thirty-Six Views of the Moon: Ala Ebtekar

Thirty-Six Views of the Moon: Ala Ebtekar by Linda AlterwitzJanuary 24, 2025

Ala Ebtekar’s offers a poetic interpretation of light, time and space in his book Thirty-Six Views of the Moon (Radius Books, 2024). Upon light sensitive paper derived from literary references of the moon spanning the past millennia, he creates cyanotypes—exposing each unique sheet to moonlight under a variety of archival glass plate negatives of the moon.

This unique combination of elements used to create this work—chemicals that create light sensitivity on the paper, the pages of written word by renown poets, writers and philosophers, and finally, the light emitted from the moon at night, offers the viewer a sense of awe. Through this work, I feel the immensity of our universe and the governing science. Simultaneously I sense the delicate nature of our place upon the Earth. Although I can only imagine and ponder his creative process, I can feel its experiential nature while humanity is presented to the light of the moon.

Thirty-Six Views of the Moon is a meditative collection of nighttime exposures. For this project, Ebtekar found and tore out pages from volumes spanning the last thousand years—ranging from poetry and science fiction to religious texts and philosophy—that reference the moon and night sky. He then worked with a photographic glass plate negative of the moon from the Lick Observatory archives in Northern California, treating each book page with Potassium ferricyanide and Ammonium ferric citrate to make their surfaces light-sensitive. Finally, Ebtekar would leave the sheets outside from dusk until dawn, using the UV-light emitted by the moon to create a contact cyanotype print layered with the cosmological texts on the found book pages.

In addition to the thirty-six cyanotypes, this volume features essays by Kim Beil, Alexander Nemerov, and Ladan Akbarnia, as well as an annotated index for this selection of images and a comprehensive bibliography of sources Ebtekar has used throughout the various iterations of this project.

art; science; nature; technology; medical imaging

Ala Ebtekar (b. 1978 Berkeley, CA) is an artist who, for over two decades, has situated his practice as a relentless leveling and collapsing of time and space to bring steadying attention to the contemporary moment.

His work frequently orchestrates various orbits and cadences of time, bringing forth sculptural and photographic possibilities of the universe, and time, gazing back at us. This extensive research and making process borrows and physically reworks thousand year old image/object-making traditions up to the latest technological advances in production.

Ebtekar’s recent investigations have created liminal experiences to longer notions of scientific duration beyond human timelines, in particular cosmic travel & the phenomenology of light. Considering light itself as both concept, medium, and even the possibilities of light as healing he uses a range of radiation in his practice, such as works birthed by daytime uv-light emitted from the sun, or night exposures that were produced by moonlight and starlight. With this method, his recent photographic works take a whole night to expose, continuing durational projects and works which he views as in collaboration with the sun and stars.

Ebtekar holds an MFA from Stanford University and a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. His work has been exhibited widely internationally and throughout the United States in such institutions as the ZKM – Museum for Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe, Germany, the British Museum, the Xinjiang Biennale, the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah, UAE, Asia Society in NYC, Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, San Diego Museum of Art, The Honolulu Museum of Art in Hawaii, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, and the Brooklyn Museum, NY.

His works are in public and private collections including the British Museum, London, UK, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA; Devi Art Foundation, Delhi, India; Orange County Museum of Art, CA, USA; Deutsche Bank, Frankfurt, Germany; de Young Fine Arts Museum, San Francisco, USA; Crocker Art Museum, CA, USA; Microsoft Art Collection, Redmond, WA, USA; Berkeley Art Museum, CA, USA; UCSF Medical Center, CA, USA, among others.

He has been awarded residencies at ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany, Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France, 18th Street Art Center in Los Angeles, Sazmanab in Tehran, Iran, and the San Francisco Center for the Book.

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Linda Alterwitz (American, b. 1960) is an interdisciplinary artist utilizing photography, collage, and interactive methods. Her practice focuses on envisioning the unseen rhythms of the human body and our relationship to the natural world.

Alterwitz sees art as a catalyst for change, highlighting the transformative power of creative expression in addressing societal challenges. By integrating the authenticity of science and the communicative power of art, she creates a bridge between the visible and the unseen, inviting the viewer to reimagine our connection to one another and the world around us.

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Tags: Environment, Light, Photography Book, Photography Books, Science