A Light Year of Lead, 2014 - 2019
A Light Year of Lead is an investigation into how contemporary science pictures the invisible & unknown. Carroll has photographed across the Midwest in abandoned mines where scientists have installed experiments attempting to detect elusive elementary particles and theoretical dark matter. In addition to these photographs made at the laboratories, Carroll has created images in his own studio that respond to the scientific theories, analogies, and experiences on-site. Rather than demystify the science, Carroll aims to amplify their strangeness.
In collaboration with Carroll’s on-site photographs and studio experimentations, Amy Catanzano has created a series of typographical poems for the book version of A Light Year of Lead (published in February 2021). Catanzano’s poetry spans the scientific and mythopoetic to the surreal and absurd, inflected with the exploratory themes and visual forms of each chapter. An expanded laboratory experiment between art, science, literature, the collaboration blurs established boundaries between the known and unknown, as well as image & text.
