Amanda Means explains her camera-less process for her transformative Water Glass series: ‘My instrument is an 8x10 inch wooden enlarger whose lens is pointed toward the adjacent wall, onto which is tacked a large sheet of photographic paper. With wood and a black cloth, I’ve constructed a large chamber between the powerful lamp and the lens, into which I place an actual water glass.’ Means’s technique produces a negative image of the water glass, from which she creates a 4x5 negative for printing her editions. The resulting image, as seen here, has been rendered by light passing through the glass, the water and the ice, illuminating the rich textures, shapes and lines from the delicate air bubbles to the vertical streaks of condensation. The monumentality of the full-frame water glass transcends this ordinary household object into the sublime.