NANCY MACKO: Intimate Spaces, 2012

"Throughout my career I have had an enduring love and use of photography in my artistic practice. Currently I am immersed in a world I call intimate spaces. Since 2005 I have been developing a body of purely photographic work that takes the viewer into a space of light, air and unfamiliar textures. The images are erotic and sexy, poignant and tender, sometimes abject and unsettling --challenging the viewer to experience an image that is not easily defined by familiar landmarks or visual cues. In this work I am looking at beauty, aging, intimacy and subtlety-- characteristics that are expressed by subjects in nature.

"Having distilled my concerns to the most direct method of recording them –the camera—I have discovered a simplicity that seems to function on multiple levels of understanding and observation. Using a handheld macro lens to shoot nature subjects from my garden at close range, the images are then realized as large scale photographic works. Photographing the changes in the nature subjects that I have nurtured in my garden, I am examining the process of creation/dissolution/re-generation. The images seem to function in several ways. Because they can be difficult to identify and somewhat disorienting, they ask the viewer to experience them without familiar cues. They function as metaphors for feelings that can be hard to name but easy to recognize. They reveal new visual spaces that one might not think could exist in our physical world.

"This new work conveys the essential core that runs through all of my work: the desire to understand a subject by intimately observing the subtle ways it changes over time and to express those observations visually. This can only take place when all the stars are properly aligned, or, in other words, when the light, the time of day and the subject are in a perfect symmetry to be studied and recorded.

"I am interested in where the reading of the work takes the viewer in their own life experience and how it might reinforce or support an experience or memory--how the work might give resonance and meaning to a moment in their life. Looking at these intimate images on a larger than life scale signals a deep respect and value for our most private and vulnerable moments and experiences."

From Nancy Macko's Website: http://www.nancymackophotography.com/Statement.html

On the back, in the artist's hand:

Tendrils, 2009-2012
Nancy Macko
1/5 39 x 27"

Ink on paper: Archival digital print mounted on white Sintra and faced with Plexiglas.

This object has the following keywords:

• Plants
• Plants (flora)

This object is a member of the following portfolios: