Woven Light— Glass Brick

At first, I took pictures all over of the things that everybody photographs. I liked them, but I still had the feeling that they were not quite my own . . . But I want photographs to be mine, I want to feel that I am the one who saw them. I think that’s why I went into the kind of photography I did, because I had this intense desire to create with light.—Carlotta Corpron, 1980 Carlotta Corpron experimented with light as the primary subject of her photographs, considering herself a “designer with light.” Here the artist photographed a bright light shining through the rippled surface of a glass brick. Although she received little recognition for her work during her lifetime, her experiments were celebrated here at the Art Institute of Chicago, where she had a solo exhibition 70 years ago.