Asa Culver
About
Asa Culver is an alternative process photographer based in Phoenix, Arizona, working primarily in cyanotype and infrared photography. She grew up in a small rural town on the east coast and moved to Arizona in 2018 after falling in love with the southwestern landscape. She received her BFA in Photography from Arizona State in 2022, and has been pursuing her artistic and photographic practice since. She explores the relationship between humans and the environment, with particular attention to the sun as a medium in her work.
By using photographic processes that are dependent on sunlight, the sun becomes an active force in the creation of each image. Her work invites reflection on how light, land, and climate shape human experience within the desert.
Through infrared photography, she examines the Arizona landscape, making the invisible visible and challenging familiar ways of seeing. These colorful, otherworldly scenes present the desert as a site of beauty and fragility.
Her cyanotype work typically centers on people, and reflects on impermanence, memory, and humanity’s relationship with the environment, through a process dependent on sunlight and water.
Being based in Arizona plays a central role in her practice. The intense sun and heat act as collaborators in the work. Asa is passionate about the natural environment, which is a large inspiration to her work and makes it possible. She spends much of her free time hiking and camping throughout Arizona.