Cyane B. Lowden Biography

Cyane Lowden began her career in photography in 1979 as a free lance photographer working mainly as a photojournalist. She has been the staff photographer at the Science Museum of Virginia since 1981, working in public relations and multi-media production.

Inspired by a showing of some of Alfred Stieglitz’s smaller landscape prints with their etching-like qualities, Lowden began creating photo “etchings” in her own style in 1984. “I am interested in the empty spaces within the scenes of a composition,” she explains, “and I particularly like working with the atmosphere – the silence of space.”

Her fine art photographs focus primarily on landscapes and seascapes. She has studied photographic techniques both independently and at workshops in Maine and Virginia.

Lowden uses an elderly Leica rangefinder- “because their lenses are superb and the camera leaves nearly everything up to me” – and a series of toning techniques on matte paper to produce her delicate, antique-appearing prints. She also includes a light touch of watercolor and pencil in some of her photographs.

To quote noted Native American poet Renee Bozarth: “The small plot of ground on which you were born cannot be expected to stay forever the same. Earth changes and home becomes different places.” The places which Lowden returns to again and again in her work change; they cannot be expected to stay forever the same.

In addition to Blue Heron Gallery, her work has been included in a number of exhibitions and several private and public collections. Her work can be also be seen at the White Canvas in Richmond, VA and The Lexington Art Gallery in Lexington, VA.