I am an Asian-American self-taught photographic artist. My digital photography is abstract and conceptual. Beginning from about 6 years ago, aesthetically, I took an about face, a 360-degree turn from realism, on one level, and on another, technically, toward a purist and stripped down back-to-basic elements to simply work with natural light, the camera, ones’ set of eyes and intentions, and deliberately eschew digital manipulation from my creative process. Rather, I factor in dimensions from realms beyond tangible physicality —consciousness, inner sense, the unseen in the in-between of space time.

I prefer to create non-object photography —typically, of a time and space that do not exist prior to my setting out with my camera to make them. This series is an expression of my quest, specifically, not to document nor reimagine life and the world that’s visible to our naked eyes and other physical senses.

Instead, at each outset, I cast realism entirely from my thought process, deliberately focusing on a moment’s journey to only follow and chase after natural light as it moves organically across given empty spaces. Using my camera as a painter would a brush, I aim to penetrate surface realities; consciously pushing and bridging the edges between photography and other visual art forms. I allow my inner vision to take over as I tease out and co-create (with light) shapes , forms, textures that together are unrepeatable and are either intentionally abstract or unwittingly, representational, illusional or allusional. And, with no strokes nor filters added later in the computer, my image is complete; a vision fulfilled at that very moment of creation.

Altogether, my work has become an absorbing and exciting philosophical pursuit as I strive to engage the viewer to catch glimpses of a transcendent photographic worldview that hints at consciousness (my own and the collective), zeitgeist, and the in-between of quantum field.

Originally from Manila, E Bee Bantug has worked professionally in advertising in Asia, Europe, the US. She recently moved from NYC and now lives in Southern Oregon; a co-Managing Partner at an IT solutions firm, she carves out time to create art whenever time permits. Self-taught, she considers her keen appreciation, study and practice of art in its visual, literary, music and performing forms to be her life-long art mentor. bee@lightexpressionist.com, tel +001.610.407.9555, www.lightexpressionist.com, IG @beebantug, FB LightExpressionist.com – e.bee bantug

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