PATTERNS AND TONES

"Down the Garden Stairs No. 1" 2017 from the Sun Shadow Series  I have always fought against the two dimensionality of photography. I was always trying to expand space within the constructs of the very nature of the medium. But in this Sun Shadow series I've been working on, I've actually embraced it and have been working on ways to actually flatten out perspective within the photograph. In "Down the Garden Stairs" I began looking once again at how graphic hard edge shadows created in the midday sun refract against the linear steps below. Removing color from these images, it flattens the image plane out even more to create a dialogue between just the shapes and the space they occupy. I am continually in awe of  Ruth Bernhard 's 1930 photograph " Lifesavers ", where the objects are transformed by the space and light in which they are arranged. But it's the discovery of the unexpected in the image that rings my bell, especially when...

"Three Strikes Park No. 1" from the Sun Shadow Series Sun shadows . Light and dark at the same time. Opposites that make each other exist. I began this series last year so I could have a parameter to study the stark contrasts of light and shadow as well as the textural nature of the bark and concrete. In this newest installation, I wanted to flatten the image into abstraction and then bring it back into a three dimensional form. The pebbles and debris that littered the sidewalk were defined by the late afternoon sun. Their long shadows on small objects reminded me of Ruth Bernhard 's study of light and form in her photograph  "Lifesavers" from 1930. The stark contrasts and simplified forms flattened the image out and became more of a study of spacial geometry. It also reminded me of Piet Mondrian 's non-representational forms in his paintings from his neoplastic period. In post, I began to see the fluttering of butterfly wing patterns, stained glas...