Featured Artist

May & June

Stephen Swartz

Stephen Swartz (born 1973) is a multidisciplinary, photography-based artist known for his abstract analog work. A Columbus, Ohio native, he received his BFA from the Columbus College of Art & Design (CCAD) in 1997. For more than 20 years, Swartz has lived in Germany, where his practice has evolved through the use of alternative photographic processes and digital experimentation. Blending analog techniques with exploratory digital methods, his work questions the boundaries of photographic media while addressing themes of perception and materiality. Swartz has produced numerous distinct series, each driven by process, chance, and reinvention, reflecting a deeply personal and materially engaged approach to contemporary photography

AWONDER:22YL marks a return to a pivotal body of work by Stephen Swartz. Twenty-two years after his final U.S. exhibition at Barcelona Columbus, Swartz revisits his photographic abstractions inspired by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. Rather than retelling the narrative, the original works distilled its characters and moments into dreamlike visual chaos.

Reimagined through contemporary techniques and two decades of artistic growth, the series becomes a dialogue across time. The images, though still playful interpretations, move beyond and toward deeper reflections on perception, memory, and transformation—revealing how evolving vision can reshape familiar stories into new psychological and visual landscapes. The result is a body of work suspended between past and present—an echo of the original journey, and a new step further down the rabbit hole.

www.stephenswartz.com