These images reflect my evolving vision as a landscape photographer. I pursued my training in photography at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. This collection of work represents my recent interest in color landscape following years of working in black and white. In the paired and merged images seen here, I have broken down the conventional compositions imposed by the camera lens. I have rearranged the images using repetitive patterns of structure, shape, color, and light. All my photos were taken with film, and printed on archival fine art paper. The formal elements of these photographs invite the viewer to experience a sense of stillness and reflection.
Cheesecake Brook Along Albemarle Greenway
In the late 1800’s, the City of Newton commissioned Charles Eliot, a landscape architect and partner of Frederick Olmsted, to provide a design and means of managing what is now called Cheesecake Brook Greenway. Although much of Cheesecake Brook has been submerged under cement, turnpike and backyards, the area where it has been channeled aboveground recalls the still timely concern of Eliot and Olmsted to maintain open space in the face of a growing population. Currently, through the efforts of community groups such as the Friends of Albemarle, a qualified landscape architect will be sought to develop a comprehensive plan to repair Cheesecake Brook and improve the environmental integrity of this area.
To recreate the mood of earlier times, I have tried to bring a 19th century sensibility to this exhibit by creating photographic prints in a painterly style reminiscent of the Victorian landscape photographers. Those artists had a deep reverence for nature which was reflected in soft focused pastoral subject matter. Images of that day were idealized to “uplift and instruct” and to that end photographic techniques of manipulation were used. I have also modified images with an art aesthetic in mind. The photographs shown have been printed on archival fine art paper.
The Cheesecake Brook images were on exhibit at the Newton Public Library in November 2007.
All images are Copyright © Sally Brecher.
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