| photographs by Steven Carley |
| My photographs have never been about 'subject'. Instead, I have concentrated on the basic elements of design: line, shape & form. Looking through my camera I work with these things, eliminating all unnecessary objects, and framing only those things that are important to the photograph. Any cropping that needs to be done takes place in the camera, not in the darkroom or at the paper cutter. Working in this way allows me to print the entire negative from edge to edge, maintaining the integrity of the original photograph. The finished print represents a composition that has been deliberately executed from start to finish. |
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| The first two photographs shown here are among my earliest. As a young art student I could not explain my fascination with walls, or understand what they were teaching me. I knew only that their simplicity freed me from all other distractions and allowed me to concentrate on the underlying elements of design and principles of composition that I had been taught were fundamental to good art and photography. |
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| Determined to better understand composition, I began to photograph stark, symmetrical landscapes. I wanted only to 'document' what I saw, always holding my camera horizontally and square with the subject. These photographs were also over simplified by centering a single dominant shape in the picture frame. And although I made many others like these, the round frozen pond and the lone power pole are probably the best examples from this period. |
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| The circular stairway was the last photograph in a series, and it marked a turning point. While retaining the same camera angle and singular shape of earlier pieces, it represented a significant break from the constraints of a self-imposed symmetrical composition. |
| The following photograph represents both a return to walls, and a new way of seeing them. This wall offered nothing more than a window with awning and a simple shadow. I chose to exclude from my composition the nearby light pole that created the shadow, and discovered something unusual: Shadows became more ambiguous. They no longer appeared to be flat as we understand them to be, but somehow as three-dimensional as the objects that cast them. |
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| The following photograph represents the beginning of more recent work. By selecting only fragments of much larger objects, by taking them out of context and moving the camera off center, I can now create near abstract compositions that present even greater ambiguity than the shadows. What are these objects, and how are they connected to one another? Though unlike my earlier work, these photographs are still created in the same way. I am still manipulating the basic elements of design: line, shape and form. |
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| All photographs appearing on this page are the sole property of the artist and under the protection of international copyright laws. No photograph may be reproduced, copied, stored, manipulated or used whole or in part without the written consent of the artist: Steven Carley. Any derivative work using these images as the basis for, or as a part of another photographic concept or illustration, is a violation of copyright law. |