Cosmic Apparitions, 2023- New York Times commission

“When Balarama Heller got married last month in Tepoztlán, Mexico, a town known for reported U.F.O. sightings, he noticed one night a fiery oval shape hovering over the mountains. He filmed it with his phone, knowing that while it might’ve simply been the moon behind a cloud, he said, “I chose to allow that sense of awe and possibility to influence my imagination.” Inspired by 19th-century spirit photography, he created these images from star fields in Mexico and sets he built in his New York studio.”