Temporary Structures

My work begins with a simple form: a prism built on the proportions of sacred geometry. Placed into landscapes both scarred and sublime, it becomes a temporary structure. An object without function that interrupts and reframes its surroundings.

I use two versions of the form: one that emits light into darkness, and one that reflects daylight back into itself. In both cases, the cube is not a protagonist but a subjective subject. It resists fixed meaning, acting instead as a portal, a visitation, or a mirror that points the viewer outward into the environment.

The photographs are not fabrications. They are events - objects in real places, recorded in real time. I wait for the right conditions, sometimes for hours, adjusting the box by inches until light and site fall into balance. Levitation and reflection happen in front of the lens, not in post-production. At a moment when AI images blur the line between truth and invention, I want my work to insist on presence.

These sites are sacred to me… sometimes vast and otherworldly, sometimes desolate or mundane. They carry both timelessness and entropy, beauty and human scar. My interventions last only for a moment, but the photograph preserves the trace of that encounter: the meeting of geometry and ground, perception and reality.

Ultimately, Temporary Structures is a way of acknowledging the mystery that lies beyond our senses. The cube, whether glowing or reflective, is not an answer but an opening.

—Paul Costello