“I have captured the light!
I have arrested its flight!”
In the early 1800s, the spark of curiosity led to a new medium that merged artistic expression and scientific methods. In this latest edition of the Art & Design Book Series at Utah Valley University, we honor the bicentennial of the first permanent photograph by traveling back in time through photography’s birth and the subsequent transference of ideas between this developing art form and the established art world teetering on the edge of revolution. The title of this book, Nouveau Lumière, is an invitation to all who participate in our journey; experience the world anew, with the same effervescence as those early artists and our students as we share our search to capture the evolving light of artistic creation and innovation.
Megan Halley
Amy Davis
Jennifer Farley
For the past ten years, the Department of Art & Design at Utah Valley University has cultivated a tradition of collaborative projects that unite students across disciplines through shared creative inquiry. Each project begins with a guiding theme that invites an individual artistic response. In collaboration with faculty, graphic design students curate submitted artwork into a beautifully designed publication. These projects have become a touchstone for our department, connecting ideas, disciplines, and generations of students through the act of collective creation.
For this installment, we began by considering an upcoming milestone: the bicentennial of the creation of the first permanent photograph. Though historians are divided on whether the first surviving photograph was taken in 1826 or 1827, what matters is that this creation signaled the birth of an idea that forever changed how we observe and interpret the world. The anniversary offers not only an occasion for commemoration but also an opportunity to explore how art and technology evolved together across multiple disciplines during the period that followed.
This project invited students to engage directly with a heritage of invention, reflection, and light. Drawing inspiration from photography’s origins and painting’s transformation from representational to impressionistic, they examined how moments of innovation in one era can illuminate possibility in another. The students’ work explores the continuity between past and present, reminding us that every act of creation reflects upon history while at the same time envisions the future.
The title of this book, Nouveau Lumière, loosely translates as “new light.” Grammatically, the proper French construction should be nouvelle lumière. The altered phrasing was an intentional tip of the cap toward the Art Nouveau movement, as well as celebrating the pursuit and interpretation of light that was a driving force in the artistic innovation in both photography and painting in the 1800’s. To think about light anew is to look at the world freshly, like those early artists. As they sought to capture their own creative observations, they traveled through time, space, and their own imaginations.
