Like many of her peers and fellow 'light painters' or 'light graffiti' artists, Vicki DaSilva was inspired by the blooming hip-hop and graffiti culture that surrounded her while living in New York City during the 80's. What differs about Vicki's work from other artists, like LICHFAKTOR, as one example of many talented artists who work with time lapse photography, is her creation of geometric shapes and colorful patterns. While some of her photos are created in the more usual way of light movement by hand, many of her more impressive photos involved complex pulley systems and tracks for the light source to travel down.

Color is in the forefront of Vicki's inspiring work, and slight variations in saturation are created by the speed and movement of the light. Her color choices are both thought out and random, as she has said, and it is clear that she favors the drastic contrasts of primary and complimentary colors which can be seen throughout her work.

Format Magazine: You use a variety of different colors in your photographs. Is there a method to the selection madness?
Vicki DaSilva: Being an artist is madness, I agree with you on that! Color applications are both deliberately planned and also random in selection, depending on the project. I have hundreds of sheets of color photographic cellophane gels that are my palette of colors to pattern and choose from.

“While in art school I became fascinated with time exposure photography at night as a way of creating images that involved principles of drawing, painting, sculpture, performance and installation. The work exists, as you point out, through the documentation process of photography.”

Much of her work is inspired by her chosen locations and it takes her about two hours to set up each site specific piece. After the initial setup,  the exposure of each shot can be as long as one hour with the lens cap removed intermittently as the track is moved  and another pass of color is added to her light painting.

More recently she has taken to painting in locations relevant to current events such as Wall Street and the White House.

About the White House: "There is no hit and run action in a location like that! And that’s the beauty of light graffiti. It is not vandalism. Most of the time no one can tell what’s being written as it is moving and temporary. It’s an awesome technique! It takes lots of practice to be legible, but, anything worthwhile takes time to master."

More Photos of Light Painting

Quotes taken from a great interview available to read over at Format Magazine.

Images from the artist's page.