September 3 - October 17, 2026
Sonoma State University
Opening Reception, September 3, 4-6pm
Artist Talk, October 3, 1-2pm
Mere Seconds is an exhibition of California landscape photographs six years in the making. On September 9, 2020, as wildfire smoke enveloped the San Francisco skyline, photographer Andrew Owen stepped onto the roof of his apartment building and began making the first pictures in this series. Since that day Owen has followed stories of ecological disruption and celestial splendor across California, engaging with what scholar Morton Paley termed the "Apocalyptic Sublime", an aesthetic sensibility focused on awe, terror, and vastness. With photographs of burn scars, fire zones, desert floods, ascending moons, and midnight rainbows, Mere Seconds is both myth and testimony, a show with two time signatures: one for these unruly seasons; and a second for the ancient geologic clock always ticking. As we contend with world-altering changes, Owen’s photographs document California’s severe ecology with a sense of urgency while keeping a human scaled perspective that resists both the seduction of spectacle and the pull toward despair.
