For his new series of island photographs, artist Brian Merriam manages to do the improbable: to render the invisible visible. In Rosa Mundi, a series of rose-colored snapshots of the natural environment, the pinks and maroons that color baby ferns, rock walls, and palm trees aren’t pigments—they are the infrared portions of the scene that are invisible to the naked eye. Merriam uses a converted camera with sensitivity to the full spectrum of light to capture the images, allowing the viewer a condensed first, second, and third glimpse of a place—seeing all at once what has always been there but has remained just out of sight. Rosa Mundi is a magic act—with the range of visible light expanded in such a way, a little more of the universe is rendered perceptible, and the familiar is made unfamiliar once again.
