Ephemeral Beauty of a Moment Diana Guerra’s “Fleeting Under Light”
Watching memories dissolve in real time, fleeting away with exposure… Diana Guerra’s “Fleeting Under Light” doesn’t just show the passage of time—it lives and dies with it. Made using Peruvian purple corn and sunlight, each image fades the longer it exists, offering an almost haunting reflection on impermanence. There’s something deeply intimate about it, almost as if Guerra is sharing a story that was never meant to meant to last, a glimpse into her world that will inevitably fade away, much like memory itself.
The book, published by Seaton Street Press, reflects this fragile beauty in its design acting as a vessel for “both grief and renewal”. Stripped back, minimalistic aesthetic of the book creates a pedestal for a simple yet sophisticated layout. Each page is an invitation to linger on the colors before they fade into oblivion—like a warm breeze that is temporary by design. Guerra sequences her delicate curation of “anthotypes” with soft, warm tones contrasting against the starkness of the Peruvian landscapes, highlighting the complex emotional texture they represent. It’s not solely an observation of photograph—you’re watching it shift, lose detail, and eventually disappear. A meditation on memory, culture, and the inevitability of change.
Born in Lima and now navigating life in New York, Guerra’s dual heritage—Peruvian and American—provides the backbone of her work. The photograpghy handles the subject of connection—the connection between Guerra’s worlds, reflecting her personal journey between these two worlds. Purple corn is the soil where the project blooms. She uses it as a canvas, but more than that nod to her roots, a meditation on the fragility of time and place. It’s this intersection of tradition and fleetingness that makes Guerra’s work feel both deeply personal and universally relatable.
The photography is aesthetically quiet but intense. Vibes are unorthodox, almost feeling like finding relics from a forgotten past that belonged to Guerra’s ancestors—the fading faces of cousins, the landscape of rural Peru, and the everyday scenes that make up her life. Again, the purple corn is the flavor. Some images take weeks to develop under the sun, changing from rich purples to oranges over time. This organic process mixed with the subtlety of her framing and her use of natural light gives her photographs a soft, almost ephemeral quality, amplifying the emotional weight of the scenes.
Guerra draws from personal and cultural experiences, gravitating towards capturing the intimate moments of everyday life. Under her lens the lines between photography and ritual, placehood, and memory gets blurred in a way that feels both intentional and raw at the same time. Guerra’s images softly whisper stories of migration, caught between here and there, inviting viewers to experience the quiet tension of belonging that comes with relatability. We are travelers in life, not just in our own path but alongside others. “Fleeting Under Light” is a meditation on that fact demonstrating how moments vanish as quickly as they appear.
