Bio

W.E. Arnold is a photographic artist living and working in Columbus, Ohio. He earned his BA from Otterbein University in 2006 and his MFA from Columbus College of Art & Design in 2017. His work examines memory, materiality, and place, exploring how photographs can preserve the traces of lived experience while also becoming objects that carry their own histories. Working primarily with analog photography and experimental printing techniques, Arnold creates works that exist as both visual documents and tangible artifacts, inviting viewers to engage with memory in physical as well as visual form.

Arnold was awarded an Individual Excellence Award by the Ohio Arts Council in 2025 for his current project, Pocketful of Ashes, which grew from a deeply personal experience: honoring his father’s wish to be cremated and his ashes dispersed across meaningful landscapes. Through this ongoing body of work, Arnold examines themes of loss and remembrance, translating private acts of grief into a visual language that resonates beyond the individual experience.

His practice is rooted in an interest in the ways photographs can function as vessels for memory. By emphasizing the physical qualities of the photographic object, Arnold considers not only what an image depicts, but what it can carry and invoke. His work ultimately explores the space between photograph, artifact, and personal history.

Statement

Pocketful of Ashes

It was his wish to be cremated, and he always joked about everyone getting a pocketful of ashes—that way, he’d end up in all the bars around town. W.E. felt he was owed a bit more. Since losing his father, Arnold has scattered his ashes across the country, photographing each location as a way of visually chronicling his father’s final resting place(s).

While scattering the ashes of a loved one was a new experience for Arnold, he felt guided by a sense of intention from the onset. Rather than leaving pieces behind “just because,” he responds directly to the energy of each location, allowing his father the opportunity to participate rather than simply observe.

From the hills of Kentucky to the forests of Olympic National Park, Arnold photographs each site from the experience of the ashes. These images are then combined with lumen prints, in which the ashes themselves are placed on light-sensitive paper and exposed to sunlight, producing purple-toned works that physically embody both the remains and the environments in which they were left.

Connect: @wearnold