The American photographer plunges us into landscapes like no other, bringing together her images and those taken by her grandfather in the 1930s like a manufactured nostalgia for an idealized past.

Lisa Cassell-Arms' elusively beautiful Merged Landscapes series is immediately captivating. Here, time and place melt and merge, capturing the magic of vistas and our singular relationship with the natural environment. The American fine art photographer, based in Vermont, the Green Mountain State, combines two landscapes in a single image, creating a parallel with our memories and perceptions, which are bound to change as our life experiences unfold. "These landscapes are far apart on the globe and separated by time," explains this early riser who likes to capture nature at dawn, when the light reveals its barely perceptible secrets.

NATURE AND COMPOSITION

This panorama virtuoso, who studied at New York University and the International Center of Photography, became fascinated with the mechanics, principles and history of photography as a teenager. Armed with her first Polaroid camera and her Time Life collection on photographic techniques, she has continued to nurture her eye and shape her work ever since. She began her career producing TV commercials and acquiring film rights, then branched out into the culinary arts, publishing, among other things, a cookbook, Seasons In A Vermont Vineyard. Today, Lisa Cassell-Arms sublimates her photographic art, setting down on film her fascination for nature, gardens and landscapes, where she reinterprets these spatial expanses and their characteristic physiognomy.

IN TOUCH WITH THE EARTH

The Merged Landscapes series is a departure from her previous work, drawing here on her own archives and those of her grandfather in the 1930s. The idea came to her during the pandemic, when she rediscovered a collection of her great-grandfather's stereoscopic maps. "I've always been fascinated by them," she explains. "Long and horizontal in format, two images appear side by side, merged in the center, often depicting exotic locations. They were captured from slightly different angles, creating an unreal quality that suggests a montage or a problem in time."

In these photographs, Lisa Cassell-Arms imitates the format in vogue from the late 19th century onwards, playing on the evolution of silver techniques and the enigmatic quality of these mysterious images. The result is a magnificent visual dialogue between shapes and shadows, places and compositions, in which she invites the viewer to discover an alternative history in these new lands.

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