Brooke Hammerle
Brooke Hammerle
I am a photographer based in Providence, R. I. In the 1980's I shot color transparency film in 35MM, 2 1/4 and 4x5 formats and originally printed my images as Cibacromes. In 1999 I discovered ink jet printing on paper from high resolution digitally scanned transparencies. This process became the realization of my aesthetic vision. More recently, in 2010 I began shooting with a digital camera, using the monitor as my transparency.
My vision in photography came through a background in painting. The camera opened the door to the space of the visual world illuminated by that mysterious, mercurial, and magical "Light". My work belongs to photography in that the image is a moment in time created by light captured through a lens. But through my experience as a painter the camera becomes a tool in reimagining photography's traditional elements.
In my earlier work, landscape series, "Autumn Mirror", "Mosaic", "Gaea", etc. (2000-2006) the elements of points of focus and depth of field became sublimated into the more plastic elements of color space, and a balance between nature and abstraction. Through reflections in water I explore hidden worlds of multiple dimensions and spatial ambiguity between surface and reflections.
In my more recent work, "Songs of Light", "Splash Series", "Press to Play", and "Heavenly Hosts", this vision of "light" has evolved. In the "Songs of Light"(2013) and "Splash Series" (2014-15) light is less about color space than an element in its own right. It's reflections become a form of energy moving through water. Aesthetically, similarly to the landscape series, I am in search of a unity, the subtlety of shapes and patterns floating in a rhythm of their own space and time, the poetry of nature's design.
In the "Press to Play" series (2015) light becomes a participant in the multimedia experience of the video parlor. In my intent to capture the sensation of "being there" light becomes a moving element of the sight and sound of the games machines and the dark cavernous space. Embedded in this work the introduction of anecdotes of humor of popular culture, commercialism of fantasy and escapism can be implied.
My most recent work "Heavenly Hosts" (2015-16) is a departure from the emphasis on the more formal plastic elements of my previous work. But the visual experience of light is still the source of inspiration. Sunlight passing through a window into an indoor pool created beautiful ambient light in the water and reflections on the bottom of the pool. Underwater photographs of senior swimmers are transformed in this light. Their bodies, illuminated in this radiant light recalled an image of a Renaissance painting of angels floating in a heavenly space. But the light is the agent that elevates their vulnerability into this vision of an infinite parallel universe of immortality outside space and time.
