Art Photography

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Unfolding the Story

When photographing, I approach the work with an understanding of the possibility of order inherent in the subject matter, and my job is to come up with a way to present a point of view. I come to a creative project with an agenda. The agenda is not always apparent, but as the work unfolds, the photograph comes into being.

In color photography, content is more complex, so not only are we looking for a story, but also we are looking to present the story with color as an important agent. Having a background in black and white photography, integrating color into the composition has been an alluring challenge.

Movement

I am excited about the range of possibilities, which are presented to the viewer and the photographer as the relationship continues to evolve. For example, “Phantom Trees” is taken from a moving vehicle. The image has not necessarily conveyed this fact, but the place where the viewer and the artist meet is in the movement of the eyes into the darkened forest.

A Plea for Peace

Photographs can be visual poems. “Storm at Restaurant” was taken inside a tiny African restaurant in Tucson, AZ. I am sitting at a table with my relatives having dinner. There are two very young children with us, so the atmosphere is far from serene. There was a window looking into the courtyard, and the red gate was closed. There was a storm moving in fast, and there were these very white buildings in the background. I suppose this image could be a metaphor for the interior scene, or a plea for peace.

Visions of Life

“Kenfire” was produced without any alterations in either the camera or the computer; it is simply a picture taken while there were several fires in our vicinity. Several miles south of this location, a fire was ravaging some timber, rural homes, and outbuildings. The sky was a rosy orange, casting purple shadows everywhere. The sun came out, and added filtered light through the trees and sky, cast a pastel glow to everything within a 30 mile radius. So here is an instant fantasy land, raw, offered by the atmospheric conditions only. It felt like an Italian Renaissance painting come alive.

“Massie Avenue” is a street, which I passed several times as a child growing up in the south. I believe that this image is representative of the many contrasting elements inherent in southern hospitality: enigmatic, illusive, inviting, yet detached, mysterious and foreboding, welcoming and innocent. This image could also be interpreted as an image of loss as it has, in my opinion, an air of wistful sadness about it.

Visual Feast

Some of the images, such as “Tulips as Watercolor” enliven the senses. Many garden images can present visual excitement, especially through exaggerated color and textural overlays. When I am in a garden, I tend to observe with my ears as well as my eyes. Then it is as if one is walking on tiptoe into another world, their world, the plant world. The visual feast is appreciated better as the camera takes in the scene, and the viewer becomes sensitive to all stimuli, trampling into a domain of silence, mistaking the mist for a breeze. Poetry is carried easily in a flower garden.

Others, such as “Mission San Xavier del Bac Dome,” help transport us to another time, or out of time: content can be specific, yet prepare us to enter into a non–specific holy space, a place of contemplation, or of meditation. Church architecture as an art form is appreciated, in most cases, by a group of people together in the same place at the same time. When I visit a church monument, it strikes me how a place of worship can also be a place of history and a gallery of a cultural heritage.

Most definitely, a church is a place of events which among other things, marks our passages, birth, confirmation, marriage, and death. I believe that a church is a place of relationship. Because I am often inspired in a church, I like to photograph in them, keeping in mind that I can never really grasp the extent of the depth of experience there.

Visual art has the potential for transforming our thinking on many levels. The visual texture of a work is transformative in nature, because it acts on the physiology of the viewer. The viewer interacts with the viscosity of the image in a dynamic exchange. Content can convince us, but content can also be a more neutral entity, thereby asking the viewer to form conclusions of his or her own.

Hope

I believe that a photography presentation can change the hearts of people, and in my case, I have chosen to present images which aspire to beauty and which, when viewed, can take a person into a place of reflection of how the ordinary can inspire us to laughter, amazement, curiosity, playfulness and a sense of irony. Could an image inspire us to take a deep breath, a welcome respite from a much too busy world?

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© 2009 Donna Seelbach.
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