LENSCRATCH - Fine Art Photography Daily

Juliette Ludeker: Somewhere You Can Never Go by Bryan WhitneyFebruary 16, 2026

Artist/educator Bryan Whitney is this week’s guest editor on LENSCRATCH. Over the next four days, he introduces the work of four of his past students at the International Center of Photography whose practices revolve around spirituality, inner-life, and the natural world.

Concerning the Spiritual in Photography is a course I have taught for many years at the International Center of Photography. The class explores spirituality within the creative process and considers how we can consciously cultivate it in our work. We study influential writings on the subject—from Kandinsky to Minor White—and discuss the rich cross-pollination between art and spirituality. Participants integrate these ideas with their own insights through exercises such as “Create Your Own Ritual,” “Body and Soul,” “Memento Mori,” and “Image Duet.” Leading this class with such a dynamic group of photographers has been profoundly rewarding, and I am delighted that Lenscratch is featuring several of these talented artists.

Each of these artists, working with the medium of light and shadow, has created deeply personal and distinctly spiritual work. Juliette Ludeker’s painterly, storm-tossed underwater worlds are awe-inspiring scenes, captured in a humble backyard stream. Olga Fried’s large-format paper negative images evoke an otherworldly terrain, their barren beauty illuminated by vast, star-filled skies. Anne Earden McDonald’s abstract scrolls are masterworks of alchemical symbolism and chemical process, where the elements themselves become image- makers. Jonathan Silbert’s sly, haunting abstractions both surprise and unsettle, challenging our perceptions of body and soul.

We begin this feature with Juliette Ludeker’s project, Somewhere You Can Never Go. An interview with the artist follows.

Juliette M Ludeker is a multi-disciplinary visual artist and writer, whose primary medium is color photography. She works across a number of styles, including underwater, macro, and abstract to explore themes of the passage of time, space and scale, isolation, quietude, and contemplation.

Borrowing from contemplative photographic practices and applying the concept of ostranenie, meaning “to defamiliarize” or “to make strange again,” she seeks subjects that are commonplace, ordinary, and easy-to-overlook (familiar), then photographs and presents them in ways to appear strange or new again (defamiliarizing them) to viewers. The purpose is to recognize an ever-present “somethingness” that often goes unnoticed. Vital to her practice is that images are made in-camera and require minimal post-processing.

Her 2025 solo exhibition Everything is Borrowed placed 42 pigment print photographs from four distinct bodies of work in conversation with one another. Together, the work pointed to the shared idea that all things are impermanent and temporal, whether they be a spider’s silk, a river full of stones, a steel machine, or a flower’s bloom.

In addition to being an artist, Juliette is a Professor of English at Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland and serves on the art editorial board of HCC’s literary and arts magazine, The Muse. She holds a BFA in studio arts with a concentration in photography and an MA in Teaching English as a Second Language. She completed all but dissertation for a PhD in English, concentrating in rhetoric and composition, and is currently a PhD candidate in Art & Design.

Juliette’s art practices also include painting, printmaking, bookmaking, mixed-media, and drawing. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, with several pieces winning awards. Her work is in private collections in the US, UK, and Brazil.

Follow Juliette M Ludeker on Instagram: @juliettemludeker

Somewhere You Can Never Go

My primary approach for making photographs, both digital and analog, is rooted in contemplative photographic practices. In essence, this entails using the camera as a means for meditation and contemplation. It also means using the heightened visual awareness that comes from these practices to be a more deliberate and effective artist. Frequently, I combine photographing with a walking practice, which means that I–along with my camera–walk, hike, wade, or wander, keeping an open mind and open eyes (physical and metaphorical) to “receive” images that “reveal” themselves. The camera often permits me to see in ways (physically and metaphorically) I could not see without it, serving as a conduit for uniting me with the subject rather than separating me from it. In this way I can answer the call made by 20th century American photographer, Minor White, to “become a camera.”

My subject, broadly, is the natural world or naturally occurring phenomena, but even though my images rely on presenting a realism that occurs in the moment I make them, I am not interested in recording or documenting a simple, expected sense of Nature’s beauty. Instead, I seek scenes and objects that are commonplace, ordinary, and easy-to-overlook or ones that viewers, me included, might assume have nothing new to convey. In other words, these subjects have become familiar. In photographing them, I attempt to employ the literary theory concept of “ostranenie” or “enstrangement,” meaning to defamiliarize or to make a known thing strange again, as it was before a first encounter. Techniques can involve making images from specific vantage points and/or by using distinct cameras and lenses.

Defamiliarizing–to take away or to re-examine what is familiar, to enstrange the subjects–allows me to notice, to study, and see/re-see this astonishing Earth. It is also a way for my photographs to act as “equivalences,” another of Minor White’s concepts, which refers to the idea that images can be more than their literal content, such as metaphors, transmission of an inner self or emotional state, and spiritual practice. I share my images so others might experience the familiar world unfamiliarly, so they might also learn to notice.

The images that appear here are from a larger, ongoing series I’ve titled, “Somewhere You Can Never Go” and are all made in creeks, rivers, ponds, or fountains. To make these pictures, I find shallow bodies of water in which I can wade or reach into easily. I judge the direction of the sun and the strength of the current, locate an area with sufficient depth, then extend my arm and waterproof camera under the surface. I rely on educated guessing and the results of past experimentation to “know” where to point the lens. In many cases, I wedge the camera between stones or only submerge it enough to cover the lens. Sometimes I stir the silt from the bottom (accidentally or on purpose); sometimes I wait for gifts of detritus as they are carried downstream. Rarely can I truly anticipate what I will get, so I consider the outcome to be my collaboration with nature, camera, planning, and accident.

To extend the enstrangement, I select final images that convey an ambiguous sense of scale, space/distance, temperature, and origin of a light source. Often I arrange images in a specific sequence to suggest a landscape that both could exist and not exist, one that might not register consciously to the viewer at first but is understood intuitively. Then, using the time and date each image was taken, the titles of individual works are intended to disrupt that constructed continuity, especially when connected to the arrangement of images. Many of the compositions appear to be made sequentially, but the titles show that they actually are minutes or hours apart, even months and years. These choices add and remove familiarity with the subject, initiating a push-pull cycling of recognition and nonrecognition of a place that viewers might believe is in their memories.

Vital to my practice is that images are made in-camera and require minimal post-processing. My goal is to maintain a connection to the realness of the subject and a truth within the natural world, even if on a philosophical level. I also want to use digital tools in similar ways I was taught to use analog tools. These choices are especially important to me in the age of computer-aided photo-editing and generative artificial intelligence, when there is an assumption that all digital photographs are heavily edited or unreal.

Among my influences are the paintings of J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, Marc Rothko, and Georgia O’Keefe and the photography of Aaron Siskind, Imogen Cunningham, Eliot Porter, and Minor White. These artists all created works that ask the viewer to understand subjects outside of words, and to consider how, as humans, we experience scale and space, permanence and temporality, the spirit and the sublime. By following their lead, I hope to do the same.

How does your work reflect themes of spirituality and inner life?

I think there is a commonly held, narrow, cliche understanding of introspection, meditation, and contemplation, that these states of “inner life” are assumed to be quiet and peaceful. Only. The same applies to notions of spirituality, the sacred, the holy. Calm, tame. Certainly, there is accuracy in those ideas, and I do seek them. But my experience has been that “inner life” also can be chaotic, wild, loud, vast. As also can be spiritual practices, as also can be The Spirit itself. In my work I try to find visual evidence of these dichotomous states.

There is something sacred in noticing. At times I feel like my photographs are prayers, to whom I’m not always sure, but they are sometimes petitions for intercession, sometimes expressions gratitude and thanksgiving, sometimes worship, sometimes crying, sometimes singing. Further, I’ve come to understand my work–and my practices in making photographic work–as manifestations of my encounters with the sublime.

There is risk in using this word because it can be nebulous and off-putting, and because of the various philosophical debates about what it means, especially in art. I do not mean sublimity as terror in the same way I do not mean a chaotic inner life is horrifying. And my definitions are perhaps overly simplified, but “sublime” is the word I use for an intuitive knowledge that there is something beyond human comprehension, something/somewhere outside of linear, linguistic language and cognition, and maybe this something pulls us toward it. This “place” is also where I would find the fullness of The Spirit, should I have the capacity to enter there. In many ways, my photographs and the practice of photographing become an explanation of search for something I cannot understand and for which no words exist.

In your practice, are there any rituals, photographic or otherwise, that guide your photography?

I follow contemplative photographic practices, which, in essence, is using the camera as a means for meditation and contemplation. It also means, for my work, using heightened visual awareness that comes from these practices to be a more deliberate and effective photographer.

Frequently, I combine photographing with a walking practice, which means that I walk, hike, wade while “searching” for images that “reveal” themselves. But I need to be alone on these walks, despite my default setting to be around people. I’ve learned that solitude while walking and while photographing is crucial for me to be able to concentrate on seeing and to be ready for the communion arising from the moment. This is true whether I’m in nature or wandering a city.

When photographing above water, I look through the viewfinder more often than not, but in the case of my underwater work, I never look. Not using the viewfinder is an exercise in contemplative photography (to find out what the camera receives), but often I can’t look even if I want to, since usually I’m working in spaces no deeper than my mid-forearm, sometimes even shallower. To make my images, I extend my arm under the water and rely on educated guessing and the results of past experimentation–maybe even the intervention of Providence–to “know” where to point the camera. Even so, every underwater session is an experiment, and I am always amazed, and sometimes disappointed, to see what the sensor records.

Have there been any mentors, thinkers or artists whose works have influenced your own photography or spirituality?

Yes…and there are far too many to list!

Family

In terms of “spirituality,” which can have a broad definition, my influences started at home. I was raised in a family of faith, even if mine is often shaky and skeptical, but questions were allowed and encouraged. My mother in particular–who was a musician–held a strong belief in The Spirit, in God as the creator and as a model for those of us who are creatives. She also was my #1 champion for cultivating my artistic self; I wish she were here to share this conversation with me now.

Artists/Art Movements

Visually, I’m drawn to 18th/19th century Romantic landscape painting, especially that of J.M.W. Turner, Caspar David Friedrich, and Albert Bierstadt, because of how they present the grandeur, chaos, and endless possibilities of the natural world, and of course, for their exploration of the sublime (at least in 18th century understandings). The funny thing is, I often don’t care much for the subject matter and wouldn’t necessarily want to have prints of them on my walls to look at all the time. Instead, I’ve found, quite accidentally and through experimentation, that the color palettes in my images made under the water are similar to those used by these painters to depict the world in air and atmosphere. Additionally, a commonality among the works of these artists and my work, is that we ask the viewer to consider questions of scale and space (how do we understand grandeur? is it not relative?), of permanence and temporality (what is enduring?), and of the intertwining of the familiar and the unimaginable (is this somewhere you could ever be?), especially in relation to the human subject.

But it is the late, 20th century, American photographer, Minor White, who has had the most obvious effect on my work and on finding/cultivating “spirituality in photography.” White taught me to consider photography as a way of unifying self and subject, the photographer and photographed, by suggesting that [I, we, photographers] “become a camera.” I’m using this phrase as part of my PhD dissertation title and as command for how to make photography a way of life, which is something else White advocated.

Thinkers

There is much I borrow from various authors who have written about contemplative photographic practices, but Howard Zehr is where it began for me through his publication, The Little Book of Contemplative Photography (2005). Zehr’s book, a gift years ago from my sister and brother-in-law, helped me to understand that I had been practicing contemplative photography since I was a college undergraduate–but didn’t know it! It also gave me perspective and impetus to change language I use for photographing. Instead of “take, shoot, capture, aim” and other metaphors suggesting photographing as dominance or aggression, contemplative photographers attempt to be open to “receiving” images as gifts and to approach seeing with “wonder and awe.”

How did taking the class: “Concerning the Spiritual in Photography” at ICP influence your work and/or was there an assignment that particularly inspired you?

The course challenged my notions of what I mean by the spiritual “in” photography. At the beginning of the course, I was thinking of “the spiritual” as being entirely on a thinking-feeling level, present within motivation, acting as a kind of behind-the-scenes catalyst for making images. “In” meant the urge, the push, the influence.

However, over the weeks of the class I started understanding that “in” is actually more complicated, meaning that manifestations of the spirit/spirituality are present elsewhere, sometimes in multiple locations simultaneously. Certainly, The Spirit is in the starting points for me, but there are spiritual qualities to noticing and to deeply seeing subjects, to being moved by the phenomenon of the moment, to the act of photographing, and in the photographs themselves. Each can be a connection to the electricity of existence; each can be a wordless orison or meditation.

Of the assignments, many stayed with me after the course, as did some of the artists whose work we discussed, but the assignment on abstraction perhaps had the strongest impact. I’d been working for a number of years with abstraction, but I hadn’t connected it to ideas of The Spirit or spirituality. At the time, I was experiencing the early days of what turned out to be a long season of loss and grief. Often I found myself staring at drab walls under harsh lighting, waiting for difficult news while also trying to find photographs. The waiting was an abstraction. The knowledge of pending, unpreventable sadness was an abstraction.

I looked at shadows and light gradations that disappeared into corners and under objects. I photographed them. I started noticing how much empty space can feel like it has the remnants of presence. The physical entity is gone, but what of the spiritual one? It occurred to me that the photographs were not of shadows and light but instead were an attempt at photographing the sensation of absence. I’ve continued to explore this concept in various ways since then.

What are you currently working on, and what’s in store for you?

In addition to teaching full time, I’m in the midst of writing (or trying to write) my dissertation for a creative practice PhD in Art and Design. In my research, I’m applying some of Minor White’s philosophies and photographic work as boundaries or models for how I practice contemplative photography, and I’m investigating the occurrence(s) and role(s) of my own sensory and bodily perceptions while in the act of photographing. In other words, I’m looking to discover what I experience on physical, emotional, and cognitive levels as I practice finding and making images with my camera.

Some new ideas are emerging from the research, including unexpected directions. For example, I keep “finding” poems or what could be lines of poetry in the audio recordings or reflections I created as data. This is a delighted surprise. Along with those, many of the photographs I made in connection with other research are suggesting they want me to make them into artist’s books (which is another one of my art practices), perhaps including poems.

Additionally, I’m hoping to find some new bodies of water to photograph in, which might have to wait for slightly warmer weather, and as always, I’ll be looking for opportunities for exhibiting and/or publishing.

Bryan Whitney is a photographer and artist in New York City whose work involves experimental imaging techniques including x-rays, lensless imaging and alternative processes such as cyanotype. Whitney holds an MFA in Photography from the Tyler School of Art and a BA in the Psychology of Art from University of Michigan. He has taught photography at Rutgers University and currently teaches at the International Center of Photography in New York City and the New York Botanical Garden. A recipient of a Fulbright Grant for lectures on American Photography he has exhibited across the United States and internationally. His work has appeared in magazines such as Harpers Bazaar, Fortune, the New York Times, as well as being featured in books, posters and billboards. His X-ray botanical images have recently been acquired as a stamp designs by the US Postal Service.

Follow Bryan Whitney on Instagram: @bryanwhitney.art

Tags: Bryan Whitney, ICP, International Center of Photography, Juliette Ludeker