NAME: LEAH KORANSKY

Genre: art

Title: Light Breaking Open'

Project: In the Kabbalist creation myth, fragile vessels containing divine light broke open and scattered holy sparks. Could Jewish mysticism, the creative process, and the Big Bang have something in common? Light Breaking Open is a series of abstract photograms that explores these questions. I use the cyanotype process (a para-photographic technique invented in 1842) to make a direct impression of objects on light sensitive paper.

Text: “Traces of the light adhered to the shards of the shattered vessels. … When the shards descended to the bottom of the world of actualization, they were transformed into the four elements—fire, air, water, and earth—from which evolved the stages of mineral, vegetable, animal, and human. When these materialized, some of the sparks remained hidden within the varieties of existence.” Israel Sarug (fl. 1590–1610), Limudei Atsilut (Munkacs, 1897), 4d.