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

With its elusive beauty, Lisa Cassell-Arms's Merged Landscapes series captivates at first glance. Here, time and place merge and blend, capturing the magic of viewpoints and our unique relationship with the natural environment. The American fine art photographer, based in Vermont, the Green Mountain State, combines two landscapes into a single image, creating a parallel with our memories and perceptions, which are constantly evolving with our life experiences. "These landscapes are far apart across the globe and separated by time," explains this early riser who loves to capture nature at dawn, when the light reveals its barely perceptible secrets.

NATURE AND COMPOSITION

This virtuoso of panoramas, a graduate of New York University and the International Center of Photography, developed a passion for the mechanics, principles, and history of photography in her teens. Armed with her first Polaroid camera and her Time Life collection on photographic techniques, she has since continually honed her vision and shaped her work. She began her career producing television commercials and acquiring film rights, then shifted to the culinary arts, publishing, among other things, a cookbook, *Seasons in a Vermont Vineyard*. Today, Lisa Cassell-Arms elevates her photographic art, capturing on film her fascination with nature, gardens, and landscapes, where she reinterprets these expanses and their distinctive character.

CONNECTED TO THE EARTH

The Merged Landscapes series marks a departure from her previous work, drawing on her own archives and those of her grandfather from the 1930s. The idea came to her during the pandemic, when she rediscovered a collection of stereoscopic maps belonging to her great-grandfather. “They’ve always fascinated me,” she explains. “Tall and horizontal, they feature two images 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 disruption in time.”

Through these photographs, Lisa Cassell-Arms imitates this format, popular from the late 19th century, playing on the evolution of silver-based techniques and the enigmatic quality of these mysterious images. The result is a magnificent visual dialogue between forms and shadows, places and compositions, inviting the viewer to discover an alternative history of these new lands.

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