In the Beginning…After moving from Ohio to Hawaiʻi in 2007, I began rethinking the origin of land itself, imagining a time when it existed in a fluid, molten state, shaped through volcanic evolution and continual transformation.
Living in Hawaiʻi, a place made up entirely of islands, shifted how I understood place. Land was no longer something fixed or complete, but something that has continually been transformed over time.
Over time, I became increasingly aware that in Hawaiʻi, land is not simply a backdrop. It is actively forming and reforming through cycles of eruption, erosion, growth, and disappearance. This awareness slowly reoriented how I viewed the land, drawing my attention away from the visible landscape and toward deeper processes of change and emergence.
In 2017, wanting to witness this process firsthand, I went to Hawaiʻi Island to observe it from above. From the air, I watched in awe as magma pushed from beneath the earth and began to transform the moment it reached the surface. Lava flowed, cooled, fractured, and darkened as it encountered air, water, and terrain.
In those moments, I realized I was no longer photographing an eruption as an event, but witnessing the beginning of life, the life of the land itself, ʻāina. What unfolded was not destruction alone, but the formation of new land. This transformation normally unfolds beyond a human lifetime, yet for a brief moment, I had the privilege of witnessing its beginning.
Over time, I continued returning to Hawaiʻi Island to photograph its eruptions as they reshaped the land, holding those experiences alongside the broader context of its shorelines and valleys. Gradually, the photographs began to reveal themselves as an ongoing conversation rather than a collection of photographic snapshots. These repeated flights over multiple years allowed the work to unfold slowly and become grounded in sustained observation rather than a single encounter.
The photographs shift between distant aerial views and close, intimate observations, allowing scale to change continually. From above, the landscape reveals its vastness and force. Up close, it reveals fragility, resilience, and quiet persistence.
In the Beginning brings together these two visual conversations, sweeping aerial views of lava fields and intimate observations of botanical life. Moving between these perspectives, the work witnesses the land’s birth, from raw expanses shaped by lava to quieter moments where life takes hold.
Together, these perspectives allow scale, proximity, location, and time to be held within a single landscape. Past, present, and future coexist within the land itself, layered rather than separate, provisional rather than fixed.
Rather than documenting a singular moment, this work attends to a process that continues long before and long after us. It documents change without attempting to resolve, control, or claim it. The images offer a space for attention, a pause in which formation, erosion, and renewal remain visibly intertwined.
Perhaps what we are witnessing is not an ending, but an ongoing beginning.
About Leslie Gleim
Leslie Gleim is a Honolulu-based lens-based artist whose work explores land as a living, evolving process shaped by time, pressure, and transformation. Having lived in Hawaiʻi since 2007, her practice has been deeply influenced by the islands’ volcanic landscapes and the ways land forms, erodes, and renews itself. Since 2017, Gleim has completed more than fifty helicopter flights over Hawaiʻi Island, producing aerial photographs that examine moments of formation alongside quieter, more intimate observations of botanical life. Working at both distance and proximity, her images address scale, change, and the relationship between elemental forces and living systems. Her work has been exhibited and published locally, nationally, and internationally, and she was recently recognized as a Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50 finalist. Through sustained observation, Gleim’s practice reflects an ongoing engagement with place, time, and the unfolding life of the land. [Official Website]
