On Friday, October 12th, The Museum of Photographic Arts will celebrate with a reception the opening of an exhibition of Ruud van Empel’s Strange Beauty photographs. There is definitely something compelling about images that are a combination of strangeness and beauty, presumably in equal parts.
At the end of this day, I looked closely at the images I captured close to home; and I did indeed find strangeness and beauty combined in a couple of them. Using the little fisheye lens on my iPhone, I turned the stairs leading to the street from my house into something strangely beautiful. I hadn’t seen them as anything but utilitarian before today. They had been just stairs. Now I shall always think of them as special when I go up and come down. An orchid blooming on my back porch is an alien being when seen from an unexpected angle. The roots of a ficus tree seem otherworldly and grotesquely spiritual. Irene’s dessert for an afternoon tea is not ordinary in any way. Its negative form is strange and unsettling with no hint of the luscious positive image of the pudding before I ate it.
6 comments:
Really great stuff, the orchid is scary, the steps beautiful as you said. The tree...hell, they're all great. I love how you look at something and see something else entirely. You have a great eye.
Excellent! What is reality? What is really, real, really? Aren't your photos showing the reality of something is your perception of them? What is the difference between knowing the future and making the future?
D.J.
"It is so interesting to see what this lens does to the world. Look at that staircase! Perhaps this is actually how the world is and our own eyes distort the world.
Clyde
Remarkable!
Sherry
I love it that you see these stairs in such a new, beautiful way!
Ginny
The pictures are phenomenal, and the pudding looks scrumptious, served in a lovely dish.
Liz
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