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2023-2024
In 2023 John Lehr was commissioned to make a project at the Heyden Observatory on the campus of Georgetown University. What he found was a building teeming with life, and traces of the incredible work that was done there by teachers, students, and researchers. In his photographs the celestial and the biological collide in places where chance meets intention, rationality meets accident, and accretion meets the present. In the basement of the building Lehr found hundreds of glass plate negatives that were exposed and developed on site. He was drawn to the negatives that were, like the building itself, ravaged by the natural effects of time. His photographs assert that the damage does not ruin the negatives; it amplifies their autonomy. The cracks in the glass, the peeling of emulsion, and the accrual of mold makes one realize that these objects don’t just point to things that are or were once alive. They are alive too.
