Drive-by Shooting: April Greiman Digital Photography

Over thirty years ago, American design pioneer April Grieman began a digital photography project, first shooting with a 35mm Nikon and then a Polaroid SX-70, capturing glimpses of tree trunks, plant and leaf forms from her moving car. She was attracted to the tension between control and lack of control that the technique encouraged as she began to intuitively compile a personal record of mediated nature.From Greiman's statement for a 2006 exhibition of this project at the Pasadena Museum of California Art:"I now use digital cameras, not just as a source of imagery but as a gateway to another dynamic process within the DNA of the computer. Natural energy is transformed into images via the camera lens, those images are then transformed into pixels—into a parallel landscape of transformative energy. Grass becomes fur, solids become transparent, light becomes volume, an instant becomes an object of extended study. Material objects de-materialize into semi-transparent blurs in which foregro