May 24 2006

Text By Catherine Jamieson

Hail the mighty negative space. Often called white space, I sometimes refer to it as visual sorbet: a place the eyes go to cleanse the palate, so to speak. It is the pause before the anthem, the hush as the bride walks down the aisle and the breath you take before you walk onto the stage. Too much and it becomes a hole, too little and it becomes a sigh.

There is a courteous and delicate aspect to still life photography. It is, after all, the deliberate presentation of an idea through an arranged tableau; if a street shot is Mary Tyler Moore throwing her cap in the air, still life is Greta Garbo arranged on a chaise lounge. Here, the negative space beckons our eyes inward toward the tableau, like the hostess to the refreshment table. It is charged with an energy that leads, inexorably, to the image it surrounds - it is a dance to pleasure that your eye is hardly aware its leading.