His Chemical Alternations series raises questions regarding the impact and interaction that humans have on the environment. The artworks come about by first photographing biologically diverse landscapes, such as lakes, tropical forests and mountains. Back in the studio, he alters the exposed film through a process of splashing, spraying, and soaking with common household and industrial chemicals. The chemicals deteriorate the dye coupler layers in the film, permanently altering the original imagery and revealing prismatic colors and crystallized patterns. The landscapes themselves, appear to be corroded, melted, and reshaped, as well as being imbued with lush cyan, yellow and magenta hues. The photographs reveal their materiality, representational photographs become abstracted and generative forms appear. Nature in this disrupted representation is suggestive of catastrophe, implying mortality, extinction and ecocide.  

With projects such as Dirt, Camera Bodies and Forms and Records, Fogelson extends his interest in the physicality and science of the photograph, with a more formal exploration of objects, and their re-presentation as photograms. He primarily works with large-format color transparency film, choosing objects that have a link to the natural world or with outmoded technology. This includes crystals, dirt, vinyl records, taxidermy and so on. The photograms are created through a series of carefully considered multiple exposures—rendering the 3-D objects as flattened graphic shapes—that incorporate additive color mixing and blending of light. 

Doug Fogelson’s artworks have been shown in numerous exhibitions in the US, as well as internationally, including solo shows at the Goethe Institute in Chicago, SFO Museum and the Alpineum Produzentengalerie in Lucerne, Switzerland. Group exhibitions including his work have been shown at the Griffin Museum of Photography and MoCP. Notable collections holding his photographs include the MoCP, J. Paul Getty Museum, The Cleveland Clinic, Deloitte and Elmhurst Art Museum among others. Doug Fogelson lives and works in Chicago.

Currently, his work can be seen in the touring exhibition, Bauhaus und die Fotographie, on view at the NRW-Forum, in Dusseldorf, Germany through March 2019.

Artworks from the  Forms & Records series will be shown in the Klompching Gallery's upcoming two-person exhibition, On Plane View, opening with a reception on January 9, 6:00–8:00pm.