I’d like to showcase the work of Katherine Fish, a photographer I know through Facebook and whose images I admire. Her main interests are fine art photography, especially architecture and still life. She uses both digital photography and film photography. She develops her own black and white films and prints them in the darkroom.
She has a high regard for the traditional craft of photography. “Darkroom prints have a unique quality and an emotional, timeless aesthetic.” She carries out little or no digital manipulation on her photographs.
To me, Katherine’s images are about finding the beauty of abstract forms in familiar objects, often seen at a macro scale.
I had never imagined there was such graphic interest in familiar household objects until I looked at her kitchen utensils series. Her abstract architecture photos are finely composed, playing with texture, line and reflection, often highlighting hidden details and imbuing them with a cryptic meaning.
I would love to have seen the square format high quality black and white prints of Victorian architecture. Pixels on a web page can never equal expertly printed black and white prints hanging on a wall.
Looking at this macro image of shiny beads I am transported back to my childhood when, looking at shiny objects from very close up I would be transported into their world. Childrens’ eyes can focus much more closely than adults enabling them to see fine details which as an adult you’d probably need powerful powerful reading glasses to see in the same way.
I often tell students that the aim of photography is to capture the true essence of the subject, and I think Katherine has achieved this here, with her thoughtful composition and choice of colour.
The balanced imaginative composition and shallow depth of field plays lend an abstract quality to a common kitchen utensil. At the macro level, textures of objects take on a quality often not normall visible . There is something interesting about taking one of the most commonplace objects and turning it into a work of art.
The shallow depth of field makes the glasses recede and the three colours give an interesting tricolour effect reminiscent of a flag but I’m not sure which one!. The composition is very simple but careful, forming a diagonal arrangement that’s pleasing to the eye.
As a photographer and linguist, I find her background interesting – she has a degree in Photography and English from the University of Bolton. Like all genres of photography, macro, still life and abstract architectural photography have a language of their own. It’s clear looking at her photographs that she has mastered it.
Take a look at her website and Facebook page as well as this article on the Bolton Business Boom website