Tristan Duke is a Los Angeles-based artist whose work is concerned with light, optics, and visual ways of knowing. Working in photography, holography, video, installation, and experimental media, Duke often incorporates technologies and processes of his own invention.

His ongoing Glacial Optics project began in 2022, when Duke ventured to the Arctic in search of glacier ice that could be converted into functioning camera lenses, which were used in turn to capture portraits of remaining glaciers. His first major solo show at SITE SANTA FE surveys this body of work, and a related catalog is forthcoming from Radius Books in the spring of 2025.

A multidisciplinary artist, from 2010 to 2023 Duke collaborated with artists Lauren Bon and Rich Nielsen, in the collective Optics Division of the Metabolic Studio, a project recontextualizing photography as both a land-based medium and a social practice. He has invented numerous holographic technologies, including the first 3D hologram vinyl record (for Jack White); his holographic album artwork earned him the CLIO award in 2016.

Duke is recipient of LACMA’s 2023–24 Art + Technology Lab Grant and the Nevada Museum of Art’s 2024–25 Pool E. Fellowship. Exhibitions and public talks have been held at the MIT Media Lab, the Getty, Santa Fe Institute, Tamarind Institute, de Young Museum, the Exploratorium, RISD, C/O Berlin, LACMA, and MASS MoCA, among others.