Here Comes the Sun

There are different kinds of encounters with sunrise. The sun that emerges from the clouds, an overwrought metaphor for a turn in mood or fortune. The dawn that brings a quotidian beginning, a promise the day's tasks might in fact get done or the hours might pass in a way that feels untethered to any burden. And then there is the rising light after a prolonged night out with its pangs of guilt and dread: why am I still awake? Have I really not gone to sleep yet? Each of these belongs to the same rhythms of time, one singular time, but a time with distinct punctuations. In the summer of 2025, Ryan Foerster left his home in Brighton Beach to spend four months in Europe. Across the floor of his studio space, inside his house, he laid out 64 sheets of expired Fuji paper, covering every surface, nearly a verbatim, to-ratio stand-in for his workspace. The light-sensitive paper was left inside rather than outside (usually Foerster makes these photograms in his garden), but it was still exposed to light and darkness through the windows and the intensely humid New York City summer heat. For the duration of his time away, the photograms developed, the angle of sun and shadow corresponding to the amount of light, what we typically consider aperture.