Lens-Based Artist Lev L. Spiro is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the project ‘Night Creatures’. To see Lev’s body of work, click on any photograph.

Are plants sentient beings? At certain times of day, in certain kinds of light, the plants in my garden seem to uproot and move about freely; seeking out the company of others, exploring their surroundings, making their opinions known.

Do they converse? Do they quarrel? I see in them the quest for companionship and the quest for solitude; the longing for meditative space, and the longing for connection.

Their innate otherworldliness shines through in these moments, and it’s difficult for me to distinguish them from other life forms, both known and not so well known to us – chiefly those inhabiting the ocean depths, and the interstellar reaches of our collective imaginations.

Lev L. Spiro is a lens-based artist whose work explores the duality of light and darkness, evoking the natural world as both sacred and indifferent—at once a place of solace and a realm of mystery. His images navigate these paradoxes, finding grace in shadow and disquiet in the sublime, forming meditations on spirit, survival, and the fragile poetry of existence. 

His fine-art photography has been featured in solo exhibitions at A. Smith Gallery in Austin, TX, and La Bottega Gallery in Laguna Beach, CA, and juried into more than 70 national and international exhibitions, including PH21 Gallery, Praxis Gallery, the SE Center for Photography, and the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel. His work has appeared in Dodho, Shadow & Light, F-Stop, All About Photo, Black & White, and Art Ascent (Gold Artist, September 2025 & June 2021).

Before turning his full focus to fine-art photography, Lev directed more than 165 productions for film and television, including Orange Is the New Black, The O.C.,  Modern Family and Weeds —a cinematic foundation which continues to inform his photographic practice through an emphasis on atmosphere, emotion, and the expressive power of light. 

Lev currently teaches the popular course Thin Places: Photography and the Sacred in Nature, for Santa Fe Workshops. He lives and works in Los Angeles, where he continues to teach, photograph, and explore the ways light, time and perception shape our experience of the natural world.

All images and text © Lev L. Spiro