Welcome to my early summer “feature find”. In this edition I want to invite you to take a look at Sarah Roach‘s instagram stream.
You’ll find a lot of nature photography, and prints often minimalistic and abstract. The abstraction comes from blowing up images, focusing on small details like a single blade of grass, or a scratch on a stone. Also colours often are muted or absent, silhouettes of grass or trees against the sky or the shoreline rendered black between the white sand and blazing sky. Some are almost unbearably harsh in their contrast, others are smoothened out by bluriness or layering effects similar to multiple exposure photography.
I find it hard to pinpoint exactly what it is that makes me love these images. But many fill me with a certain longing, a feeling similar but not quite the same as nostalgia when I look at them.
I first met Sarah back in 2017 at a friendly crit group session organized by Tracey Kershaw at Backlit. She was one of three or four or five (depending on what you count) who brought books to the session, and thus I naturally felt drawn to her work. Her books were made from semi-opaque parchment paper, had black covers and were bound with a bright red thread. On the pages were prints of grass, layered by the binding, turned into a field of grass in a book.
On that evening we talked mostly about the binding technique, and thinking back, I must have come across as a know-it-all, I suppose. Well, we were talking about bookbinding, and when it comes to that, I find it hard to suppress the urge to impart my knowledge. – Even where maybe a little inappropriate (*blush*).
Since then we met a couple of times, both being connected with Tracey, and I found her more and more interesting, if not to say a little eningmatic. She never talked much, and when she did, she didn’t reveal much about herself. And so I am very glad that she agreed to meet me for an interview which I am going to present here next week. I hope you’ll come back for the interview. For now: do have a look at her photos, and enjoy!
All photos used with kind permission of Sarah Roach.
I am looking forward to this interview! The reflection of the power tower, whatever they are called, is so poetic. I have always loved seeing those structures march across the land. And I agree, her prints are wonderful – focused on small details that imply the large whole.