art21Rachel Quinn

“East from Flagstaff Mountain, Boulder County, Colorado,” 1975Robert Adams

Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 inches

Adam’s photographs are usually either absent of human subjects or sparsely populated, while still capturing the physical traces of human life. The artist’s work often presents a contradiction

between natural landscapes and those visibly transformed by humans as seen here in the seven mountain top setting contrasted with the populations and towns below.

“Morning Fog”Rachel QuinnJanuary 2016

iPhone photograph, 633 x 377 pixels

With Adams work being typically absent of human life and often showing a vast sparsely populated area the background, I knew I wanted to photograph a spot that I’ve run by many foggy mornings and had a similar emotional response to. On this particular morning, the fog blurred the background scenery making it almost indistinguishable from the water. The only

prominent object in the photograph is the man-made dock that separates the peaceful scenery, which I found to be along the lines of thought with Adam’s depictions of landscapes visibly

transformed by humans.

“Ocean Surface Wood Engraving 2000”Vija Celmins2000-2001

Wood Engraving on Zerkall paper, 20 3/4 x 17 1/4 inches

Using primarily blacks and grays, Celmins depicts and expands upon limitless spaces in her photographs. With her work she has the ability to match a tangible sense of space with extreme detail in each project. She often studies her work for long periods of time in order to fully grasp

the image that she is looking for.

“Tunnel”Rachel QuinnJanuary 2016

iPhone photograph, 640 x 631 pixels

Immediately when I saw Celmins work I thought about the long, narrow tunnels of the DC metro that appear to be so steep and limitless when you first look down. While Celmins usually works

with natural scenes, I thought an interesting response to her work would be depicting a seemingly limitless space that was man-made and not found in nature. Her use of primarily

blacks and greys add to the limitless space, which I felt was accurately depicted by the never-ending shades of black and grey within the metro tunnels.

“The Pulasky Skyway Crossing the Hackensack River”Rackstraw Downes

2007Oil on canvas, 24 x 66 1/2 inches

Downes considers himself a painter of his surroundings and his environment. He often paints his works in panoramic format, paying careful attention to detail while accurately depicting the

broad expanses of the subjects surroundings. Often times, his paintings are of industrial images that are disrupting nature. In this painting in particular we see a bridge and factory in the

background cutting across a body of water. His compositions usually feature horizons that bend according to the way the eye naturally perceives.

“Downes Skyline”Rachel QuinnJanuary 2016

iPhone photograph, 633 x 377 pixels

In his paintings, Downes depicts his environment and surroundings using a panoramic format to bend the painting in the way the eye naturally does when taking in our surroundings. They just built a new bridge/running connecting two sub-neighborhoods of Philadelphia (where I attend

school) and I knew this would be the perfect place to take a panoramic photograph in response to Downes work. While he does this using paintings, it was pretty cool to see that I could reflect

and respond with a staged photograph using only my phone. I tried a few different angles for this shot, but responding to Downes careful attention to detail, I experimented until I found the perfect angle for the water to reflect the streets and sky in a way that I thought pulled the entire work together. A common theme I found in most of my favorite works on Artists 21 is the idea of

nature and the industrial world blending in different ways, whether it be harmonious or disruptive, and this was my own personal response to this concept.