DAVID M.C. MILLER | OTHER SUNS
NOV. 1, 2025 - JAN. 10, 2026

Typically described with words like capturing, harnessing, or freezing, photography is often imagined as a means of arresting time and light — phenomena that, in reality, exceed containment. “Solar energy is the source of life's exuberant development,” writes Georges Bataille in The Accursed Share (1949), suggesting that the sun offers a seemingly infinite abundance to which all life owes its origin. The photographs of Lethbridge-based artist David M.C. Miller are made in resonance with this idea. His work reimagines photography not as the containment of light, but as an encounter with its boundlessness — a document of its infinitude beyond the lens.

In Other Suns, Miller upends the mechanics and temporal assumptions of traditional photography. Here, the image is not fixed but open-ended: an ongoing investigation of light, presence, and being. Along the gallery’s longest wall, a sequence of colour photographs rests behind glass, leaning gently against the wall atop a shelf. Each work presents vivid and finely modulated transitions — fuchsia, sunlit yellows, and earthy greens — evoking the slow drama of atmospheric change. Some images suggest radiant skies at dusk; others hint at landforms dissolving into air, with deep browns fading into luminous blues. 

These subtle tonal shifts are not simply aesthetic; they are intimately tied to the process of their making. Just as sunsets appear when the atmosphere scatters shorter wavelengths of light, Miller recreates this condition in miniature — dispersing the “other sun” of the darkroom bulb onto light-sensitive paper. Working entirely without a camera, Miller draws directly with light. His ongoing series of chromogenic prints are produced using only an exposure unit, filtered light, and photographic paper — no lens, no film, and no digital sensor. Each photograph is developed by hand through successive exposures, resulting in delicate, vivid fields that suggest both atmosphere and space, yet resist clear resolution.

Miller’s deep attention to the conditions that shape an image — light, shadow, duration, and presence — extend beyond the photograph to a series of sculptural works he refers to as live photographs. Assembled from found objects and photosensitive paper, these installations are exposed gradually over the course of the exhibition, sensitively attuned to the path of sunlight through the gallery’s windows. In a quiet way, they register the presence of all who encounter them. These works continue Miller’s inquiry into what escapes the photograph — into what lies beyond the frame. Completed only through the changing conditions of exhibition and the presence of viewers, they remain open to the world, unfinished and alive.

Curated by Adam Whitford, Curator & Exhibitions Manager
Preparators: Arianna Richardson (Lead Preparator), Rachael Chaisson, D. Hoffos

David M.C. Miller is a Canadian artist and educator whose photographic practice engages with themes of memory, time and duration, impermanence, and the interplay between presence and absence. Born in Montréal, Miller has developed an internationally recognized body of work that foregrounds photography’s potential as a contemplative and commemorative medium. Positioned at the intersection of documentary and conceptual art, his work approaches light as a vehicle for philosophical inquiry, treating the photographic image as both a record and a resonance.

Miller’s long-term photographic projects —The Museum, Visitors, and Conservators — created at Holocaust memorial sites including Auschwitz, embody a sustained and profoundly reflective inquiry into the politics of memory, the ethics of witnessing, and the photograph as a complex site of temporal and emotional compression. In recognition of the intellectual depth and aesthetic ambition that define his work, he was awarded the Canada Council for the Arts Prize in Photography.

Miller’s work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across North America, in Europe, China, and Mexico. Selected venues include Plug In ICA (Winnipeg), W139 (Amsterdam), Centro de la Imagen (Mexico City), Josef Sudek Atelier (Prague), Stadtmuseum Münster, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (Los Angeles), and CASCO Art Institute (Utrecht). His photographs have also been featured in a range of publications and curatorial projects that explore the expanded field of photography.

As an educator, Miller has held appointments at institutions in Canada and abroad, including the University of Lethbridge, New Brunswick College of Craft + Design, University of Guelph, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Alberta College of Art and Design, the Banff Centre, FAMU (Prague), the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design (Prague), and FaVU (Brno), among others. His teaching foregrounds photography as a critical, material, and conceptual practice, grounded in the evolving histories of media and in lived experience.

Miller studied photography, filmmaking, and media art at Sheridan College of Art and Technology, and art and art history at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He continued his studies at Simon Fraser University’s Institute for Contemporary Art and at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, deepening his engagement with photographic practice, art, and critical theory. He also conducted independent research into the origins of photography at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

Miller lives in Lethbridge, where he continues to develop process-driven, research-based projects that investigate the photographic image as both document and proposition.

Artwork framing generously supported by L.A. Gallery 2.0.