Lowell Observatory: Worlds Revealed Speaker Series – Pilgrimage of Light: An Artist’s Adventure in Astronomy with Mark Chen

When we look at far-away galaxies, or when we lay our hands on ancient rocks, we are sensing distant pasts. Mark Chen embarks on photographic journeys to bear witness to this trio of coexistence: universe, Earth, and people. Laboring the legwork of landscape photographers and with a transjector and a NASA archive, he transjects the stars onto the terrain while photographing. He matches the durations of the celestial light’s journey and the geologic formation’s age, visualizing space and time in an otherwise unfathomable scale.

Mark Chen centers his multidisciplinary practice on photography. He invents and repurposes tools as he pushes media boundaries, devising new processes and designing logistics that make possible the executions of his concepts. For his latest series Pilgrimage of Light which explores the mysterious coexistence of the universe, Earth and people, Mark Chen travels to hard-to-reach wilderness with his invention of a transjector, fleetingly juxtaposing spacescapes and landscapes while he photographs them. Chen’s past and recent engagements include the artist in residence at Grand Canyon National Park, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, and Music@Menlo, California, exhibitions in Wright Gallery, Texas, Hong Kong Art Week, International Art and Science Museum, Texas, and a feature article Where Space and Time Merge in National Geographic Magazine’s March, 2025 issue.

This program is included with General Admission.

Ages 13+