Until There Is No Sun

Filter Photo is pleased to present Until There Is No Sun, a solo exhibition of photography by Clare Benson.

"There is a place in the far north of Scandinavia, north of the Arctic Circle line, where winter winds and wild skies and the back-and-forth of freezing and unfreezing create a landscape like no other. In the months that mark the end of one year and the beginning of another, the sky shifts into darkness. Each day, a calculated eight minutes of sun is lost, until there is no sun left to lose. And then it is dark; it is a continuing reminder of the tilted axis of the earth, when part of the world turns its back to the sun.

My tenure above the Arctic Circle lasted nearly as long as an entire trip around the sun. In this time I worked alongside space physicists, indigenous reindeer herders, and a neuroscientist who studies the eyes of Arctic reindeer. This continuing body of work explores relationships and contradictions— of light and seeing, of science and ancient myth, of that which we know and that which we continue to seek." —Clare Benson

Clare Benson is a photographer and interdisciplinary artist from the northern reaches of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. In 2014/2015, she received a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Arctic Sweden at the Swedish Institute of Space Physics. Her book, The Shepherd’s Daughter, was published in 2017, by Photolucida, in receipt of the Critical Mass Book Award. Benson earned her Master of Fine Arts at the University of Arizona, and her Bachelor of Fine Arts at Central Michigan University. She has had her work exhibited, screened, and featured in publications across the US and internationally. Her work is held in private collections and institutions including the Norton Museum of Art, Northlight Gallery, and the Center for Creative Photography.

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