Susie Leness Gilbert is a New York City and Long Island based photographer. She focuses on nature in all its iterations, seeking to capture the quiet rhythms and ever-unraveling layers of the elemental world. She received her BA in English Literature from Middlebury College and she studied at the International Center for Photography in New York, and with the teacher Carol Dragon to learn the art of digital photography. Gilbert’s work has been exhibited in group shows in New York City, New Canaan, CT, Quogue, NY and in the Acquavella Galleries exhibition catalog for “Wayne Thiebaud Mountains 1965-2019.” ARTIST STATEMENT My work engages with the ways in which varying perspectives can reconfigure common phenomena into marvels; when a flower becomes an ethereal version of itself, the mundane becomes mystical. I use photography to reexamine the everyday wonders of a natural world, and in doing so I also hope to document the beauty of our fragile ecosystems. PINHOLE PROJECT STATEMENT A pinhole allows only a small amount of light into the camera and requires long exposures, which is why images are sometimes blurred. Likewise, when shooting with a pinhole, the photographer cannot see much, if anything, through the camera’s viewfinder. Beginning students of photography often start with a pinhole camera to help them understand the fundamentals of light and aperture, and then move on to more complex lenses and techniques.I found that returning to a pinhole camera to shoot a familiar landscape – the Atlantic Ocean and its surrounding creeks and bays on the East End of Long Island – forced me to let go of many of the traditional rules of photography and to let the rhythm, color and form of my subject guide the work. I have learned to rely on a combination of intuition, practice and a bit of luck.The results can be surprising; the water, the waves, the marsh grass and the colors, often transform into dreamlike images. These images feel at once familiar and unfamiliar; I recognize the ocean, more because I can feel its rhythms than because I know that particular stretch of beach.The luck side of pinhole photography, the uncertainty of what the camera will reveal, is for me a heady and exciting path.