Slow Light: Lumen Print Workshop with David M.C. Miller
In dialogue with Other Suns by David M.C. Miller
Friday February 20, 5-6:30 p.m.
$10 members | $15 non-members
No prior photography experience is required. Designed for all ages. All materials are provided.
Join artist David M.C. Miller for this hands-on art workshop. This workshop invites participants to explore photography as a slow, sculptural, material process. Inspired by Other Suns, it introduces lumen printing—a camera-less technique in which images are formed through the direct action of light on photographic paper.
Rather than capturing an instant, lumen prints emerge gradually. Shadows deepen, tones shift, and unexpected colors appear as light interacts with the paper. Working indoors with simple lamps and flashlights, participants will experiment with composition, light and shadow, duration, and chance—drawing with light to create one-of-a-kind images that cannot be replicated.
Light moves across the paper as an energy, leaving traces that unfold over time—its effects feel almost faster than light, shaping shadows, tones, and textures in ways that extend beyond the instant of exposure. Like the works in Other Suns, these prints are formed through attention, time, and material transformation, celebrating unpredictability as part of the creative process.
No prior photography experience is required. Designed for all ages, the workshop moves at a quiet, reflective pace suited to the gallery. All materials are provided, and participants will leave with one or more finished prints.
David M.C. Miller is a Canadian artist and educator whose photographic practice engages with themes of memory, time and duration, impermanence, and the interplay between presence and absence. Born in Montréal, Miller has developed an internationally recognized body of work that foregrounds photography’s potential as a contemplative and commemorative medium. Positioned at the intersection of documentary and conceptual art, his work approaches light as a vehicle for philosophical inquiry, treating the photographic image as both a record and a resonance.
Miller’s long-term photographic projects —The Museum, Visitors, and Conservators — created at Holocaust memorial sites including Auschwitz, embody a sustained and profoundly reflective inquiry into the politics of memory, the ethics of witnessing, and the photograph as a complex site of temporal and emotional compression. In recognition of the intellectual depth and aesthetic ambition that define his work, he was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Prize in Photography.
Miller’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across North America, in Europe, China, and Mexico. Selected venues include Plug In ICA (Winnipeg), W139 (Amsterdam), Centro de la Imagen (Mexico City), Josef Sudek Atelier (Prague), Stadtmuseum Münster, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (Los Angeles), and CASCO Art Institute (Utrecht). His photographs have also been featured in a range of publications and curatorial projects that explore the expanded field of photography.
As an educator, Miller has held appointments at institutions in Canada and abroad, including the University of Lethbridge, New Brunswick College of Craft + Design, University of Guelph, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Alberta College of Art and Design, the Banff Centre, FAMU (Prague), the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (Prague), and FaVU (Brno), among others. His teaching foregrounds photography as a critical, material, and conceptual practice, grounded in the evolving histories of media and in lived experience.
Miller studied photography, filmmaking, and media art at Sheridan College of Art and Technology, and art and art history at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He continued his studies at Simon Fraser University’s Institute for Contemporary Art and at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, deepening his engagement with photographic practice, art, and critical theory. He also conducted independent research into the origins of photography at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
Miller lives in Lethbridge, where he continues to develop process-driven, research-based projects that investigate the photographic image as both document and proposition.
Fee Assistance
The Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin aims to reduce barriers that would otherwise prevent community members from accessing our programming. If you have any questions, require assistance with the application process, and/or find the workshop fee to present a barrier please contact Heather Kehoe | hekhoe@saag.ca | 403-327-8770 x 29.
