Alison Carey’s images respond to similar questions of perspective, but rather than the abstract concepts of physics, her subject is the invisible past of the Paleozoic era. Drawing from data and illustrations of scientific research, Carey visually constructs the marine life, as she writes, of a “primitive landscape that has since been eroded or erased.” Using clay models submerged in 55-gallon aquariums, Carey photographs her vision of this ancient ocean – a world that is otherwise, and forever, out of human range. As works of scientific study and of artistic imagination, Carey’s photographs animate science and history, while reflecting the subjective, incomplete and ever-shifting nature of both disciplines. They become documents not of history, but of historical thought. Finally, Carey prints these photographs as contemporary ambrotypes, emphasizing the historical (and imprecise) nature of the subject and giving the landscape a mysterious and magical dignity.