Sand . Silk . Snow .

Sand . Silk . Snow . Photographs by: Maria Luisa Morando, Chaco Terada and Lisa M. Robinson. photo-eye Gallery, past photography exhibition.

"Maria Luisa Morando’s desire to remove the disorder from her world inspired this new series of beach photographs titled White, Series 1. By overexposing each image, Morando creates the illusion of bright light, simplifying the scene and muting the colors, allowing the viewer to experience quiet, tranquil moments by the ocean. By removing the surplus detail, Morando creates a space for the viewer to fill with the other senses. One can almost hear the waves, feel the heat of the sunlight and taste the salty air. These timeless photographs were taken in Marina del Rey, California.

Chaco Terada uses a combination of Japanese and Chinese calligraphy to create her images. She learned these traditions as a young child and has since transformed these ancient techniques to produce images that are uniquely hers. She combines calligraphy and photography, which is scanned and printed onto transparent silk. Additional calligraphy is then added with sumi ink. “When I create a brushstroke, I think of the motion of water in a stream, or the movement of breeze. The lines do not create a word in the traditional sense, they interpret the meaning or mood that I feel."

Lisa M. Robinson began her Snowbound series five years ago. “On the surface, these images are quite beautiful. They appear elegantly simple and accessible, evoking, perhaps, the silent tranquility that one might feel after a fresh snowfall. Beneath the surface, however, there is a subtle tension. Like fine haiku, each image quietly references another season, a time of life or activity that has already passed, and may come again. Throughout the series run the leitmotifs of poles and ropes and a palette of man-made color. The relationship between the human and the natural world becomes more tightly intertwined as the series progresses, and the cycles of life and death and transformation fold inward.” This self-conscious meditation on the power of visual metaphor is key to the Snowbound work. Here, Robinson takes the inherent formal intentionality of large format photography and adds a carefully constructed metaphoric visual language. This work is collected in her recent monograph, Snowbound, published by Kehrer Verlag."