Reflections

PrizeHonorable Mention in Photography
ArtistElizabeth Panzer
CategoryNon-Professional

I am drawn to the delicate beauty found in nature. Yet living in a world where the news brings violence into my home, the world feels incongruous with my experience living in the country. My work is driven by a need to reconcile these divergent realities. I work with a flatbed scanner. Objects change once they are scanned. Their three-dimensionality is transformed in a way that inspires me to see them as dynamic compositional elements. In this form, they are easily manipulated to become building blocks. I then build the final image, layer by layer. This series features flowers from my home and garden. Ordinary flowers shown larger than life bring the tactile nature of each leaf and petal to the forefront. Depth, often non-literal, is created through the variations in transparency and dissolution of focus. My images invite the viewer into a private world, beautiful yet unnatural.