A brief movement after death by Caleb Cain Marcus explores the release of energy from the body into the universe when we die. The images were taken along the coasts of New York and California and contain sky and ocean-immense bodies of space that we can lose ourselves in; becoming part of their vastness. The inspiration for the book came to the photographer from a personal experience. With the birth of his daughter, his death suddenly felt very near. His childhood questions about what happens when we die resurfaced and Marcus began to think about how to visually represent what occurs after death. The work represents the starting point of his new practice that juxtaposes digital and hand-applied mediums to create a hybrid surface, color and edge that challenges the medium of a photograph and the way in which it is seen, understood and felt. With the motion of a pendulum the grease pencil is swung by a string to make tightly grouped marks that reference the finite quantity of time in a lifespan and that move across the paper as if in a formation of light leaving the earth.

The results of the election were hard to comprehend because they couldn't be understood through logical or rational thinking. The lack of comprehension of the results led to half the nation living in a continual state of bewilderment. Caleb Cain Marcus turned to photography as a means to make sense of and process his visceral reaction to the election. He photographed the blue sky because, like our thoughts and minds, it is abstract and seemingly undividable; and yet, humans create division with thoughts and ideas which have no physical presence. He used his work to move beyond the feeling of hopelessness and despondency. The first step of the process was to physically divide the prints by tearing them in half. The next step was to join the two pieces together and finally to apply gold leaf along the tear to create a continuous gold line. Through this physical intervention to the photographs every print becomes a unique expression of an attempt to leave behind the feelings that resulted from the election.

In 2018 Caleb Cain Marcus completed twenty large-scale, unique photographs, all depict a shifting beam of light. Each print, a red monochrome, mixes two color spaces: digital and analogue to the exquisitely printed book. Light imbued with the color of flesh traces Caleb's exploration of color, shape and spatiality.