LUKE SMILLIE
Film
→ Oblivion
→ I Care, I Swear
→ Luke and Henry
→ I’ll Wait for You
→ Afterimages
→ FIJI CAPUCCINO
Photography
→ Homesick
→ CHRYSALIS
About
Contact
Film
→ Oblivion
→ I Care, I Swear
→ Luke and Henry
→ I’ll Wait for You
→ Afterimages
→ FIJI CAPUCCINO
Photography
→ Homesick
→ CHRYSALIS
About
Contact
2022
Chrysalis is a photographic series created during solitary night walks throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Moving through emptied streets and suspended time, the camera lingers on color as an emotional register rather than a descriptive tool. Neon spills, sodium glows, and muted shadows become signals of an in-between state: contained, uncertain, and slowly changing where color hints at transformation before it fully arrives.
Artificial light wraps ordinary spaces in unfamiliar hues, suggesting a world mid-metamorphosis. These images do not document absence so much as they attend to what was incubating beneath it: moments of stillness, heightened perception, and fragile resilience. Like its namesake, Chrysalis exists in a liminal state where color carries the promise of change before it fully reveals itself.