One breezy evening, I came across some shadows of trees falling on the side of a metallic structure. I immediately got my camera and started taking photographs. I wanted to capture not only the tree shapes on the wall but a sense of movement and the beautiful, ethereal light. Photographers don’t often get lucky…I did that day.

The resulting photographs are not sharp like snapshots. When editing this series, I softened/blurred the images slightly to imply movement and help emphasize luminous end-of-day light. The photographs are small (5×7 inches) and positioned on a 20×16 inch page to isolate the image from the background/wall for a traditional and more personal photographic viewing experience. I also decided to make several combinations of diptychs and triptychs on 20×16 inch size paper.

I have presented all of these framed in a traditional black frame to get a sense of how they can be optimally viewed and what they might look like on a wall. It’s a very clean minimalist look that, I think, complements these photos.

I was quite excited to make this series. For me, they are “precious” small photographs that, when examined at close range, reveal only impressions of a scene…like one would experience when viewing a small painting. Now that I’ve finished these, I am tempted to make small drawings of them. I was so happy with the resulting photographs, however, that I have doubts regarding whether or not, and to what degree, I could really improve on these images by rendering them in graphite, charcoal or pastels. Who knows what form inspiration might take…

All photographs in this open edition series are available as archival pigment prints priced at $325 CAD.

Michael Christidis