Lines and Light

The photographs in this series are botanicals and landscapes. Though their literal content is obvious, the thematic element may not be as readily apparent. With this series, the intent is to perceive, capture, and reveal pattern in naturally occurring forms, which for me is part of discovering nature’s beauty — “seeing the lines” I call it.

More specifically, I hope to convey the delicacy, complexity, and necessarily impermanent nature of these patterns. If I have succeeded in doing this then perhaps the viewer might enjoy a greater appreciation for this kind of transient beauty. A flower dies, a blossom opens, fog lifts, and the fleeting beauty that was evident a mere beat before…is gone. These photographs look to capture that “mere beat before.” When they do, my belief is that they can communicate an impulse to look more carefully, and more often.

The photographs are black-and-white gelatin-silver prints toned for both color shift and archival permanence. The photographic papers used were chosen for their receptivity to toning. Each print went through a three-step process — a brief bleach “dip,” re-saturation in a highly diluted sepia bath followed by a thorough H2O wash, then re-saturation in either a gold or selenium toner for archival permanence and additional color shift. The result is a muddying of tones I call “bruising.”