Stills.
Light at the Edge of the World.
Artist statement:
Marty Blumen on a trail of mani stones inscribed with Om Mani Padme Hum. Solukhumbu, Nepal (2010)
I have been chasing light for over two decades, and I hope you enjoy this selection of images.
In 1990s Brisbane, a small group of misfit school friends and I sought escape from the flat, uninspiring city. With pocket change and borrowed climbing ropes, we spent nights exploring Kangaroo Point, a floodlit quarry above the humid river. It became our first climbing sanctuary and the spark for a lifelong obsession with exploration.
We quickly moved beyond the city, scrambling over overgrown rocks, scaling sandstone bridge pylons, and hopping trains to the Glass House Mountains, a wild playground just 60 kilometres north. Those early adventures shaped everything that followed.
Since then, I have biked through Yangshuo's karst landscapes, climbed Europe's limestone walls and Yosemite Valley, and crawled through Tasmania's underground caves. The world's wild places continue to inspire me.
I spent many years convinced that film, and later DSLR cameras, were the only sensible way to photograph them. It turns out I was wrong. Modern camera phones have become good enough that practicality finally won. They are waterproof, live in a pouch slung over my shoulder, survive caves, canyons and storms without complaint, and shoot RAW files that hold up remarkably well.
The biggest surprise is not the image quality but the workflow. I used to drive hundreds of kilometres just to collect developed film before discovering whether I had managed to take a decent photograph. Now I can shoot, edit and publish an image before I've even left the adventure. Progress, reluctantly acknowledged.
Influences include Paul Pritchard, Galen Rowell, Wade Davis, Richard Feynman, Yvon Chouinard, and Nick Nichols.
Marten Blumen, July 2026
