Barbara Macklowe

“I think, see, and dream in full color. I can spend hours watching the light and its effects on natural subjects. It is never the same, but always interesting and often gorgeous, sometimes even breathtaking. These are the moments I aim to capture in my photographs. In nature when the light is right and flowers are backlit by the sun, the colors sing.

Flowers have been my muse. I picked up a 35 mm camera, bought color film and started by making images of flowers in my garden. I learned years later that these images were a lesson in portraiture. The two portraits in this show, Two Poppies and Pink Hollyhocks were shot with super saturated color film and existed as slides before becoming prints.

In my Doubletime Series, by creating double and multiple exposures of these flowers in my digital camera, the colors meld. When I blend them digitally, they become entirely new images both different and abstract. There is a luminous quality rarely found in straight photography. The sense of looking through the leaves and petals results in an otherworldly appearance and achieves a three-dimensional quality.” - Barbara Macklowe, July 2024