The Energy of the In-Between
Leah Oates’s Transitory Space series begins from a deceptively simple premise: nothing we inhabit remains fixed. Through in-camera multiple exposures, light leaks, and the material contingencies of analog film, Oates allows chance to enter the photographic image without relinquishing authorship. Her photographs hover between landscape and abstraction, where memory, perception, and environmental change overlap. Rather than treating transience simply as a metaphor, Oates embeds it within the very process of image-making. In this conversation, she reflects on movement, analog photography, and the creative possibilities that emerge when change is understood as a fundamental condition of being alive.
From ArtVanguard Editorial Team
Portrait of Leah Oates
Artist Biography
Leah Oates has a B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was a Fulbright Fellow for graduate study at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland.
Oates has had solo exhibitions in the New York City area at Susan Eley Fine Art, the MTA Lightbox Project at 42nd Street, The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, The Open Center, The Center for Book Arts, and the Brooklyn Public Library Main Branch. She has also had solo exhibitions nationally and internationally at Black Cat Artspace in Toronto, Real Art Ways in Connecticut, Sara Nightingale Gallery on Long Island, Artemisia Gallery in Chicago, and Galerie Joella in Turku, Finland.
Oates has participated in group exhibitions in the New York City area at Susan Eley Fine Art, Lichtundfire Gallery, Wave Hill, Edward Hopper House, Chashama, Williamsburg Art Center, Metaphor Projects Gallery, Usagi NYC, Denise Bibro Fine Art, Nurture Art Gallery, and The Pen and Brush Gallery.
In Toronto, Oates has participated in group exhibitions at John B. Aird Gallery, Gallery 1313, Propeller Gallery, Gladstone Hotel, Remote Gallery, Arta Gallery, and The Papermill Gallery.
Oates has received press and been featured in numerous publications, including Al-Tiba9 Contemporary Art Magazine, The Shanghai Literary Review, Mud Season Review, dArt Magazine, The Tulane Review, Vallum Journal, Calyx Journal, Blue Mesa Review, Friends of the Artist, GASHER Journal, Flumes Literary Journal, and 805 Lit + Art Journal.
Website: http://leahoates.com
Instagram: @leahoates19
Email: leah.oates@gmail.com
Artist Statement
The Transitory Space series deals with urban and natural locations that are transforming due to the passage of time, altered natural conditions, and a continual human imprint. In everyone and everything, there are daily changes, and this series articulates these fluctuations in the photographic image and captures movement through time and space.
Humans leave traces and artifacts of our consciousness everywhere in our environment. Contradictory realities can be found coexisting wherever we look. They’re present in what we choose to think, what we choose to believe, how we choose to act, and what we choose to observe.
When I look back on a moment, it’s full of impressions, and multiple exposures capture this. I make multiple exposures on specific frames in camera, which allows me to display a more complete correlation of experiences that a single exposure just misses.
Every moment captured on film is over as soon as the shutter clicks; the image records the ephemeral. Yet, in reality, there is always a visual cacophony of experience, and we live in many realities at once. Multiple exposures express the way we experience the world, as our perception is not fixed.
Transitory spaces have a messy human energy that is perpetually in the present yet continually altering. They are endlessly interesting, alive places where there is a great deal of beauty and fragility. They are temporary monuments to the ephemeral nature of existence.
Interview with Leah Oates
Q1. You grew up in Massachusetts and Maine within a highly creative family that included painters, a writer, a photographer, a potter, a glass artist, and performers. What did art mean within your family when you were young, and how did being surrounded by so many different creative practices shape your understanding of what an artist could be?
Everyone in my extended family is interested in the arts, and my brother and I were engaged in numerous arts activities from an early age.
My mom is a painter and taught visual arts at high schools and colleges; my dad was a writer, carpenter, and musician; my uncle was a potter; and my aunt was a glass artist. I was urged to explore and pursue all the arts, so I made art, acted, sang, danced, wrote, and created. I also trained as a classical ballerina from ages five to eleven.
At an early age, I knew that I would go into the arts, but I was not sure which field to focus on and pursue. By my early teenage years, I realized I was more interested in the visual arts.
My family made being in the arts seem like a viable path in life. It has been a good and vibrant life in the arts, and I’m thankful to my family.
Q2. During your education at Rhode Island School of Design and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, you studied painting, printmaking, and photography, and you later pursued printmaking as a Fulbright Fellow at Edinburgh College of Art. How did these distinct academic environments and geographic transitions shape your understanding of space, material, and image-making?
Each of the places where I studied taught me the technical aspects of painting, printmaking, and photography that a beginning artist needs to learn. I think, though, that the most important thing my professors taught me was how to be an artist through their example, and how to fully step into and embrace a life in the arts.
Q3. When did the idea for the Transitory Space series first begin to take shape? Was there a particular location, photograph, or period in your life that led you to recognize transience as a central concern in your work?
I think moving a lot since I was a child has shown me that nothing is static and that change is a constant. Transition and flux are simply part of life, and we, as individuals, are also changing in our bodies and minds. We’re alive on Earth for only a short period of time, traveling through space and time.
My life has been all about the in-between place, which for me is a less stale place to live—an unfixed state that has energy and potential. I would suggest that this is the reality for everyone, whether they recognize it or not. Life is not static or fixed; time stops for no one, and change is constant. We all live in chaos and constant transition, but humans like order, safety, and comfort, myself included.
The older I get, the more I see that the ways we try to order and organize our world can trap us in illusions about how time and the world truly work. I think now, too, that abstraction is closer to reality than realism, as humans do not experience life as a series of crisp, realistic images, but rather as a series of impressions. All these contradictions in life make it beautiful and magical.
Q4. The series has continued across many years and geographic locations. How have the core questions driving it changed over time, and how do you maintain a fresh and perceptive eye while returning to an overarching conceptual inquiry?
I maintain a fresh eye and perspective by traveling, doing residencies, getting into nature as much as possible, taking a pause when needed to focus on other activities, and meeting up with my artist friends often. I have also run a gallery, Station Independent Projects, in NYC and Toronto; organized shows; and participated in pop-up shows and art fairs in NYC, Miami, and Toronto.
It’s been rewarding as an artist to continue the Transitory Space series across many years and to see the series evolve and change. I’m very engaged with this work and theme, and I also love photographing outside in the world, editing the images, and seeing what happens, much like a painter or printmaker.
For me, living in a variety of geographic locations has taught me that literally everywhere is changing, and that there are so many ways to live, just in Canada, in the States, and globally.
I think as I age, I feel time passing more than I did as a younger artist. I feel more of a hunger to live an active life, as I now understand that even if I live to one hundred, time is still limited. I aim to embrace change, transition, and flux more as I age. Life is so beautiful, magical, and alive.
Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Nantucket #10B, Massachusetts, 2025–2026. Color photograph shot with an analog camera on 35mm film.
Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Truro #3, Massachusetts, 2025–2026. Color photograph shot with an analog camera on 35mm film.
Q5. Multiple exposure introduces unpredictability into the photographic process. How do you balance intention and chance while making an image, and how does this process help you translate layered perception or memory into photographic form?
When I photograph multiple exposures, I leave most of it to chance, but I also draw on many years of training and on working with the same camera since college.
My camera and I feel like one unit when I’m photographing, and it just flows. My dad gave me this camera when I was twenty for my undergraduate studies at Rhode Island School of Design, and now I’m in my fifties. I use a Pentax K1000 with 35mm film, which is completely analog, and I love it.
I think the intention comes through my eye: how each image is framed when shot, how it’s edited and color-corrected, the locations I choose, and what the images visually communicate, especially when presented as actual prints and as an edited series.
I recently shot thirty-two rolls of 35mm film, with 36 shots each, during a residency in Truro, Cape Cod, and on Manitoulin Island, Ontario. The shooting and editing are where the intent comes through, as some images work and others don’t, which would be the same for any artist.
Q6. Circles, dark marks, stains, and luminous forms recur throughout your images. They can resemble optical effects, organic matter, cellular structures, or environmental particles. Do you associate these forms with particular meanings, or is their ambiguity essential to the experience of the work?
These aspects of my work happen as I randomly open the back of my camera to expose the film to light and air, literally inviting the elements and the environment onto the negative. This also introduces chance, open possibilities, and randomness.
The optical effects, circles, dark marks, stains, and luminous forms that recur throughout my images also represent, to me, that the landscape is changing, is alive, and is communicating with me—and with everyone, if they listen.
Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Nantucket #15A, Massachusetts, 2025–2026. Color photograph shot with an analog camera on 35mm film.
Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Truro #16A, Massachusetts, 2025–2026. Color photograph shot with an analog camera on 35mm film.
Q7. As digital and generative AI tools make layered imagery increasingly easy to produce, what remains irreplaceable about analog film and in-camera multiple exposure for you?
Analog film and in-camera multiple exposures are grainy and show a human hand, a personal eye, and perspective. Perhaps AI tools will make something similar; I don’t know. I read somewhere that AI is not good at comedy, which suggests to me that there are limits to what AI can and will do.
AI, to me, is basically a human creation that reflects humanity. It does some things well, like math, and other things not so well, like fine arts or dance—robots are not doing ballet on stage yet, for example.
I guess we just have to wait and see. Meanwhile, I’ll be out shooting and editing in the studio, as this brings me joy, purpose, and energy.
Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Nantucket #1, Massachusetts, 2025–2026. Color photograph shot with an analog camera on 35mm film.
Q8. Your recent Nantucket and Truro works return to New England, where you grew up. These places are also shaped by tourism, seasonal habitation, coastal erosion, development, and climate vulnerability. How does your personal relationship with New England interact with the broader social and ecological realities of these landscapes?
My extended family is mostly in New England, and having grown up there, I feel a deep connection to the region, especially Massachusetts and Maine, where I was raised. It is part of my memory bank and in my heart, and I feel so at ease in New England.
It’s true that New England is shaped by tourism, seasonal habitation, coastal erosion, development, and climate vulnerability, and climate vulnerability and coastal erosion are of greater interest to me in my work.
Having traveled a lot and lived in Canada as an American, I’ve come to understand that the same things are happening in different ways all over the globe, and there is literally nowhere to escape this.
In Canada, there are massive forest fires, land being seized by the government for resources, and massive tourism farther west in Alberta and British Columbia.
I now see that these are issues that will affect everyone globally and are not specific to any one region of the world, alas.
Left: Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Truro #13, Massachusetts, 2025–2026. Color photograph shot with an analog camera on 35mm film.
Right: Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Nantucket #5, Massachusetts, 2025–2026. Color photograph shot with an analog camera on 35mm film.
Q9. You have exhibited in highly visible public and civic settings, including the MTA Lightbox Project at 42nd Street, The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, and the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Library. How does presenting works about transitory spaces within places defined by public transit and public movement alter the way audiences encounter it?
I was able to watch people interact with my work at all these venues, and people loved seeing nature inside, as it activates the space and brings trees, clouds, and sky into spaces with little natural light.
People need sunshine and fresh air, I’ve learned, having lived through several grey winters in Toronto and seeing how they affect people. It’s pretty profound how a lack of sun affects one’s health and outlook. Thankfully, winter can also be very sunny, with bright blue skies in Toronto.
Grey winters are a side effect of climate change, as the cold makes the moisture evaporate and lift.
The MTA public transit system, The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, and the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Library are all hubs of tremendous human activity, and no two days are the same at any of these venues, which is fascinating in itself. They are ideal places to show work about transition, as they are the epitome of constant flux and change.
Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Truro #9, Massachusetts, 2025–2026. Color photograph shot with an analog camera on 35mm film.
Q10. As climate change intensifies and urban environments continue to transform, are there new geographic zones, ecological frontiers, or specific types of spaces you are eager to explore next?
I would love to create work in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories in Canada, and in Nevada, Alaska, New Mexico, California, and Arizona in the States down the line.
I’ve mainly shot on the East Coast in the States and in Canada, which has been wonderful, as there’s a lot to photograph on the East Coast in both places. But I’d be happy to photograph more mountains, deserts, and Arctic landscapes, as this would yield different images from areas that are also in environmental transition.
Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Truro #6B2, Massachusetts, 2025–2026. Color photograph shot with an analog camera on 35mm film.
Q11. Drawing from your extensive background across art institutions, international residencies, and solo exhibitions, what advice would you offer emerging artists who are trying to develop conceptually rigorous ideas into compelling photographic form?
My advice is to put in as much time as you can and to put in the work, to show up for yourself as an artist and individual, and to honor your vision and purpose as an artist despite trends, external pressure, and rejection. My art gets into things, but I also get rejection letters, and I just keep moving and going.
Keep making art whatever the feedback, as I truly believe that the world needs art to cast off some of the harshness and darkness. The arts show us our humanity, the beauty and pathos in living, and can lift us up and teach us about ourselves and the human experience.
And lastly, follow the instructions when applying for things, and get good shots of your work, as this will increase your chances of receiving more opportunities.
Q12. When you are not in the studio or behind the camera, what activities, places, or everyday rituals help you reset your eye—and do any of them unexpectedly find their way back into your work?
When I’m not in the studio or behind the camera, I go see art as much as possible. For me, it’s like taking my vitamins, and I feel boosted, especially when seeing good and great art. I want to see what other artists are creating, as it can be inspiring, and this is my community as well, so I try to show up as much as possible.
I get into nature often, walk daily, and meet up with friends as much as possible. I try to mix things up with travel and artist residencies when I have the time and resources to do so. I need to be in the world to have something to say, and also to get out of my own head and the studio from time to time in order to see more clearly. This benefits both me and my work.
I think the sun, nature, trees, clouds, and sky—and the fact that everything is temporary and in transition—enter into my work through my daily experience outside the studio.
Leah Oates, Transitory Space, Nantucket #2A, Massachusetts, 2025–2026. Color photograph shot with an analog camera on 35mm film.