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Click on the thumbnails above to view larger images.
Small Wonders
Theme
My college professor of German often spoke a refrain: Es ist immer im Detail; it is always in the detail. This was the insight he brought to reading, critiquing and appreciating literature. He meant that when readers seek the artistry in writing, then the words chosen, their placement in the work, indeed every element of the text contribute to creating both the writer’s art and the readers’ experiences.
That saying has stuck with me for 25 years. In fact, it has become the voice of my muse in photography and in writing, especially poetry. Through images and words, I seek the details that illuminate, the often overlooked elements of the world around me that provoke a sense of wonder at the beauty hidden in their details.
Like most everyone, I am awestruck by and grateful for the splendor of a brilliant sunset or the grandeur of a towering storm cloud. But I find my distinctive perspective in shining my own dim creative light upon the details I see in the greater world around me.
I believe in the creative power of intensity of focus, of concentrating on the elements of the world around me and in their arrangement, their interaction with one another. I also trust in the editorial power of cropping with the camera. By making a photograph of this part of the whole, and not some other part or the whole itself, I can isolate, abstract and thereby illuminate specific elements and their connections with one another.
Abstraction holds with it the capacity to universalize. If, for example, I show you some rust in detail, we can appreciate the physical processes that take years, maybe decades, to create the rust’s colors and patterns, the rust’s interpretation of the metal and its original shape. Then the image speaks of change, of reshaping, of the passage of time, and not merely of this rust’s old implement sitting abandoned in a pasture somewhere.
In this exhibit you can share with me a few details of our world. I hope they will give you a sense of appreciation for the artistic splendor and the grandeur around us, often in the little things we tend to overlook. Es ist immer im Detail!
News
- Denton photographer’s lens captures “Small Wonders” of Nebraska life: Read →
Showing
This exhibit appeared Jun 1 through Aug. 31, 2007, during business hours, at:
W Hair Studio
141 South 9th St.
Lincoln, Nebraska.
