Meghann Riepenhoff’s photographic practice explores relationships between humankind and the environment, with a focus on temporality and impermanence. Through a historic yet highly experimental process, Riepenhoff creates cyanotypes by exposing light-sensitive paper to the sun without the use of a camera. Riepenhoff often places paper along shorelines, exposing it to the elements—waves, wind, sun, rain, snow, and sediment—to create what she calls dynamic cyanotypes. Through this process, Riepenhoff continues a photographic legacy of artistic and technological documentation of the natural world that can be traced to Anna Atkins’s (1799–1871) cyanotypes of aquatic plants and Wilson Bentley’s (1865–1931) photographs of snowflakes. 

Ice #286 (27–34℉, Ephemeral Stream, WA 2.23.22) was made in Bainbridge Island, Washington, in freezing climates to record structural properties of water in its frozen state. The artist submerged a large sheet of cyanotype paper directly into a stream, then allowed glacial snow, ice, and water to cover the paper. After exposing the paper to sunlight, embracing time, and selectively adding photographic chemicals, the resulting work reveals crystalline structures of ice as it changes states. The lush surface captures the ephemeral movement of water as it ebbs across the paper and forms fractal ice crystals, recording the cyclical process of nature and the passage of time. 

About the artist: Meghann Riepenhoff (b. 1979, Atlanta, GA) holds a BFA from the University of Georgia, Athens (2003), and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute (2006), where she subsequently taught as a visiting faculty member from 2010 to 2015. Her work has been exhibited widely, including at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Denver Art Museum, CO; Aperture Foundation, New York; and C/O Berlin, Germany. In 2018, Riepenhoff was the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship. The artist lives and works in Bainbridge Island, Washington.