Debe Arlook
Debe Arlook is an award-winning American artist working in photography. Through diverse photographic methods, Arlook's conceptual work is a response to her surroundings and the larger environment as she attempts to understand the inner and outer worlds of human relationships. Degrees in visual communication and psychology inform these views. Her work is exhibited nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions and festivals.
Arlook is the recipient of the CENTER Social Award Honorable Mention, Critical Mass Top 50, LensCulture Summer Open Award 2023, International Photo Awards Official Selection, and nominated for the Las Fotos Advocacy Award. Her work is included in Klompching Editions and featured in LensCulture, Feature Shoot, All About Photo, Lenscratch, Fraction Magazine, Strange Fire, L'Oeil de la Photographie, and Frames Magazine. She writes for the PhotoBook Journal, is an advisor for Pasadena Photography Arts, founded Arlook Printing Services, and is on faculty with the Los Angeles Center of Photography and John C. Campbell Folk School. Currently, Arlook is producing a book about photography portfolio review events and directing her first documentary film. Her studio is based in Santa Monica, California.
Artist Statement
foreseeable cache is a conjured term referencing the anticipation of remembering what the soul knows.
Twenty years into my marriage, an irreparable fracture led to my devoted personal development and spiritual growth path. Instinct guided me to bathe in nature's wisdom, offering inner peace and a deep knowing that comes with an awakening heart, mind, and soul.
Made in the American West's mystical and sublime landscape, this work explores my meditation experience and transcendence. Translucent veils symbolize shifting into and out of mindfulness hampered by a chattering mind and external noises. In-camera double exposures represent internal and external landscapes, with surreality and artificial color that blurs the line between reality and perception. The alternate reality of foreseeable cache merges physical and spiritual realms as homage to these sacred spaces.
Release Date: August 18, 2023
foreseeable cache no. 42, 2021
foreseeable cache no. 34, 2021
Release Date: December 08, 2023
Driving south on U.S. Route 191, I exited Arches National Park in awe of the sacred tribal land and its geological formations. With the landscape changing quickly and drastically, I began photographing. I experimented by combining double exposure and the motion technique I use for my road trip project, Edge of An American Dream. This was the beginning of foreseeable cache.
no.34 is an inverted photo-based image centered in a green, provocative space that invites viewers to enter its realm. Surrounded by pale blue mounds of hardened sandstone and coffee-toned flora, the darkly clouded sky and translucent column suggest a time and place one can only see in a pure or transcendent state of mind.