The “Lumen” photography exhibition at Memorial Union creates a sense of nostalgia that feels like flipping through a decade-old photo album, revealing a life’s worth of memories. The collection was designed and created by a young photographer based in Wisconsin: Margaret Durow.  It’s open at the New Class of 1925 Gallery and runs to Dec. 1.

Through the process of designing, composing and structuring, the exhibit makes the connection between the natural and human, freedom and loneliness, lights and shadow. The inspiration behind the pictures draws great attention and grants them infinite imagination.

There are many natural elements, such as forest, water, sky and rocks present in her photos. Growing up along the Rock Lake in southern Wisconsin, Durow builds up a strong and intimate relationship with the nature around her. Through her photos, she represents the frantic flow of the water, a luminous sunset glow and the milky mist diffusive in the sky. The way she associates nature with human bodies and the way she constructs the pictures provides a mystical world where they have a unique visual experience.

Multiple-exposure is a technique Durow frequently uses in her works. The first photo that grabbed my attention contained a girl superimposed over a forest with a sunset in the far background. The color composition is very interesting. The mist in the distance is thick and heavy and it appeared to be milky purple with a tinge of pink. The forest in the foreground creates a big chunky shadow, which draws great contrast to the light color around it. Among the shadow of the woods, there is a silhouette of a girl wearing a hat and looking far off.

The contrast between the bright and dark colors and between light and shadow generates a lonesome and desolate ambience. The girl in the center seems to be frail and helpless. It gives the aura of a heart-breaking, romantic story in which a girl waits for the return of her lover.

At first glance, the photo of a girl standing by the ocean may seem to be low quality because there is a lot of noise and grain, especially in the shadow area. Some of the contours of subjects are blurred out because of the overexposure. But standing at a distance, viewers can find that actually the grainy blur is done on purpose. The rough and big particle gives the photo a sense of aging and an impression of mutability of memories. It is telling a story of a remote past that has been long forgotten. The line between sky and water is so vague that viewers can hardly tell where the sky begins, where the water begins and where these two mediums meet.

The whole picture is split into two worlds. The darker rocks, bush and shore where the girl stands represents the actual world she lives in. The bright and pale part of the photo is another world where all the unknowns, hopes, wonders and adventures are waiting to be found and explored. With a more refined look, viewers can find that the girl in the photo is actually looking at the other “world,” maybe pondering, maybe longing.

Pictures like this contain so much uncertainty and the possibility that audiences could freely hover in their imaginative world.