Artist Statement

These photographs are the result of experimenting with citrine, a yellow variety of quartz, placed in a bowl of water and exposed to various kinds of light while air from a fan stirs the water. The refraction and diffraction occurring along with other dynamics have produced complex “haunting” imagery. But, the hauntedness is not limited to the ostensibly spectral qualities of this imagery. Rather, the hauntedness also derives from the ways in which these photographic images resonate with historical events—such as shipwrecks—and with a repertoire of representations of such events. For example, for me these particular photos call to mind J. M. W. Turner’s 1840 painting “Slave Ship” in combination with his 1796 “Fishermen at Sea.” Photographic images such as these constitute a sort of optical unconscious, what surpasses our ability to see in the moment, but that is, nevertheless, there, as the photographic process reveals. However, what is “there” involves continual interpretive perception on the part of viewers, myself included. All of these images were gleaned spring 2025 from experiments with citrine in water. They are not generated by water-gobbling AI. 

María DeGuzmán is a scholar, photographer, writer, and music composer. Her photographic work has been exhibited at The Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston, MA, USA), Watershed Media Centre (Bristol, England), and Golden Belt Studios (Durham, NC, USA). She has published photography in, among many other journals, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Phoebe, and New Delta Review. Her SoundCloud website may be found at: https://soundcloud.com/mariadeguzman.