From the Series "Oculus", "H16-25-8, Prairie Creek, CA."
Archival Pigment Print, Signed
2018
Artist Proof
24" x 20" (unframed)
26" x 25" (framed)

About the Piece

These photographs were made with and within living giant redwoods and sequoia trees, some more than 3,000 years old, representing a small remnant of their species. The views from deep inside their dark interiors, lit only by brief sunlight, reveal an array of strange and nearly recognizable imagery. To the tribal group that has been their caretakers for millennia, these hollow-core trees are considered sacred space. They can be secret passageways to an underworld-places to make contact with the powers and forces that will eventually make their way into the world of light.

About the Artist

I have worked as a photographer since the 1970s, when I began exhibiting works in color-both landscapes and portraits-entitled "Modern Mythologies." My first solo exhibition was presented at the International Museum of Photography in 1978.

My interests in anthropology led to photographing antiquities in Latin America and Asia, as well as recording remnants of these expressions found in the rituals of trance. This documentary work led to landscape photographs of forests as a manifestation of pantheistic energy. Patterning found in tribal art and textiles became the framework from which ideas about the natural world would emerge in my most recent works, "Drawn from Nature" and "Oculus". In 1985 I was hired to build a photography program at Drexel University in Philadelphia, where I taught until this past spring and where I am currently professor emeritus. I have exhibited extensively over the years, both in solo and group exhibitions and in galleries and museums.

www.stuartrome.com