SHEENA CHAKERES
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AN ARTIST’S STATEMENT
I’ll never forget the first time that I photographed the night sky. Back in March, right at the beginning of the pandemic, I went out to the Galisteo Basin Preserve before dawn, set up my tripod by an old windmill, and took a long exposure of the Milky Way. In the months that followed, I spent several nights under the stars, and I realized that what I love about night photography is how it brings me to meditate on time. This image was taken a few days after I got the call that my father had passed away. His passing was sudden, and I didn’t get to say goodbye. My father loved the night sky, and growing up he would often call us out to the backyard to look through the telescope. He had been encouraging me to try star trails, as he himself loved astrophotography. In honor of my father, I went out to Abiquiu and pointed my camera to shoot continuously for four hours towards the North Star. It was a beautiful moment to sit in stillness, feeling the Earth’s rotation and meditating on my father and Father Time. I then stacked the images to create star trails, and added one twilight photo to lighten the foreground.
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Volume 16 • 2021
