Aether, 2025

An exposure of the sun rising out of the Coral Sea. I had been chasing this image for months, waking up before the sun emerged on the horizon, and battling the morning clouds which would appear every morning. I was looking for an image which captured this shared experience, one which even the first humans would be familiar, seeing this orb being reborn out of the aether of the sea. Trying to achieve this image I found my mind shifting, being much more aware to anticipate where the sun would first appear on the horizon. Which normally also was met with disappointment when I saw clouds forming at the same place where the sun would first emerge. One morning I had this moment where the clouds subsided for the first hour or so before clouds came back and eventually rained on me. Captured with a medium format film camera, hand developed.

Kyle Hoffmann is an artist working primarily with analogue photographic processes. His work is inspired by the natural world and fundamental hidden phenomena that shape our human experience. Fascinated by these mechanisms, the movements of deep time, and how they influence our perceived reality.